Love & Misadventure
by the.goal.is.greatness
Summary: Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are. [Peter Parker x OC] [Tumblr prompt: hero and a villain living unknowingly with each other]
1. Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions

**Title:** Love & Misadventure [Prologue: Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions]  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 2,038  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

The men in this city were all wretches. Dim-witted, featherbrained, harsh, arrogant, miserable, wretches. She was sick of them. Sick of the way they spoke down to her, of how they spoke down to her, looking over their noses at her. Of how they spoke to her like she was a child, like she was lesser just for being a woman. She hated how their eyes skipped right over her in a room full of people. Worthless. Meaningless. Invisible. Invisible in one of the largest cities in the world simply due to an accident of birth. Simply due to her gender.

She should not feel like it was a bygone era where women's rights had never existed when she spoke to men about things they deemed 'men's work.' She should not feel like she was struggling against a tidal wave current just to get one step ahead in the world. She should not feel a modern, female Sisyphus in the middle of New York City, with its towering skyscrapers and blaring horns and millions of people. It was archaic and dated and ancient history. And yet it was happening, here and everywhere, every day.

And here she was, being told she wasn't good enough. Again. Here she was, being dismissed and rejected. Again. The paper in her hands, pristine and flawless, the visual representation of hours and hours of hard work crumbles in a trembling fist. It is a struggle to keep the same tremble from her voice. "I don't… understand…"

The man across from her barely flicks a glance up from his desk, giving her the same dismissive look that he had given her proposed thesis subject that sits wrinkled in her hands. "There's not much to understand: we reject your proposal."

"But – "

At this, he finally looks up at her, eyes as hard and cold as most men in positions of power are at their hearts. "Look, miss. Don't take this personally," he said in a tone that suggested he thought she was going to do just that, a look that said so many, many women had fallen apart across the table from him that he was done with it. "But we feel that this subject matter would be something more suited to…"He struggled to find the correct word.

"A man." She knew what word he was looking for but couldn't outright say so her tone is finite and blunt. She had listened to his short speech with smoldering fury, one that darkened her hazel eyes to an almost inky black.

"… a more masculine inclined personality," he finishes with a simpering smile. That smile said _I win_. It said _There's nothing you can do_ and _Better luck next lifetime, little girl_. She hated it. She hated the gleam in his eyes and the smirk on his lips; the haughty tilt of his chin.

And she hated that he was right. She wasn't the kind of person to go to Human Resources or call the press about a supposed instance of gender discrimination on a master's panel. She just wanted to do her research, to learn and grow and make things in her life better with her studies. He was right. Not that there was nothing she could do to make them see her worth, but that there was nothing she would do to make those waves. Men were too volatile, too dangerous, too cruel. All she wanted in this world was to prove her worth, to work for her money, to earn her keep doing what she loved, doing what she was good at. Was that really so much to ask? Apparently, since her own family wouldn't let her do what she wanted to do with her life.

Her chin falls forward as she looks down, beaten and hating that, too. "Thank you… for your consideration." Her politeness falls on deaf ears; he is already absorbed back in his work, too important and busy and conceited to bid her farewell or apologize or even glance her way as she leaves the room in a cloud of despair. The lobby is a glittering room off steel and glass, beautiful and cold and empty of any really warmth or personality. She drops the crushed ball of paper in a wastebasket on her way out into the bustling city and it feels just like she ripped out her heart and threw that away, too.

Was this what her entire life would be like? Being shown a list of things she wouldn't be allowed to do because she was a girl? Even though she was good at it, brilliant. A downright genius if her primary school professors and all of her test scores were anything to go by. That wasn't fair.

"You're really going to give up so easily, girl?"

There's no reason to think the quiet question is being addressed towards her, but something, some instinct, makes her turn around anyway. Standing in the middle of the busy New York City sidewalk is the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. Pedestrians are parting around her like they're the Red Sea while she does nothing more than stand there are regal as any queen. She tall and lithe, with the tousled blonde hair that cascades over her shoulder in a fall of ringlets and moss green eyes of a model that are as hard and flat as jewels, but with cheekbones as sharp as glass and a smile as bright as a blade. She looks more like Boadicea tumbled from history. Her pencil skirt and blazer as powerful as any armor, her stilettos as dagger-like as any weapon. The way she stands, arms crossed and shoulders back is so familiar that it's startling.

"I'm sorry?"

Her lips arch in a slow, vulpine smile and when she waves her hand it is only then she notices her tattered proposal held delicately in the woman's fingertips. "Are you?"

"What are you doing with that?" It is strange that no one seems to notice them, not once does a single New Yorker turn their head or yell at them for holding up the quick and deadly pace of city foot traffic.

"You know what they say, _one man's trash_, right?" The smile widens. "Well, one woman's, I suppose." The hard tap of her heels as she moved closer is as steady and hard as a heartbeat. "Is it truly your wish to let this marvelous research be thrown away with tomorrow's rubbish?"

The woman seems honestly curious and interested in her answer. It's almost unnerving to have those vibrant eyes pined on her so exclusively that it makes her shift in nervous embarrassment. "I… well, I don't have a… a choice, do I?" It's an evasive answer and she knows it, but it's the best she has.

But the smile never wavers from that achingly beautiful face, only grows wider. "Is that what you think? Or is that what a chauvinistic, male, pig thinks?" There's no pause to answer in, if the woman had wanted an answer at all, as she continues. "So tell me then, what is your master plan now that the big, bad man has told you no?"

She blinks. "Uh, I hadn't thought about it really. I have a friend who works at a library, she says it's okay money." It wasn't like her family was going to help her. They'd pretty much written her of as a failure for what they thought were 'lesser life choices than she deserved.' "So I suppose I'll just do that."

"What would you say if I told you I had a means for your to fund your own research? That all it would take is for you to work for me?"

"I have school and work?" Her statement is more of question.

She makes a dismissive gesture. "I would only require you in very brief intervals, no nine to five or corporate hours or any of that nonsense."

"I would probably ask you what the catch was."

When she laughs it's like tinkling bells. "Yes, there is always a catch, isn't there?" The woman assesses her with intelligent and piercing eyes. "It might be that some of the things I ask of you are not exactly… legal."

"You want me be to become a criminal?" She can't stop the taken aback tone of her voice.

The woman shrugs, artless and relaxed and even that is beautiful, like a cat stretching. "When men attempt to put women in their place, women must show them theirs." There is a long, introspective pause. "You need not kill anyone, and I can give you every advantage against being arrested by the police."

"Or any of the dozen superheroes that call New York City home."

Another shrug. "I have methods to protect against those idiots, as well. An extensive lab and training facilities would be at your full disposal, as well as a very impressive benefactor." There's a pause where the woman straightens her spine and smiles a smile that's dripping with power and confidence. "Me." She tilts she chin back and tosses her mane of hair over her shoulder. "You may call be Anita, darling, but most know me as the Red Queen."

Her mouth falls open in abject surprise and her eyes dart around in terror, but no one has even glances their way. She casts her bewildered eyes back at the woman who had just outed herself as one of New York City's most notorious criminal masterminds like it was nothing.

Anita – the Red Queen, holy shit, the _Red Queen_ – waves a dismissive hand at the flow of people around them, still walking around them like a river around rocks. "They cannot hear our conversation." She taps a finger against the watch on her wrist. "There is a small device created in my lab implanted here that creates a very minor force field around us. Just large enough to block out conversation and keep the sweating masses from trampling us, but just delicate enough that they do not notice."

So she was trapped in here with a supervillain whose main gift was her intelligence. Lex Luther, as it were. "I…"

"Come on, darling, come work for me. I need an apprentice and I would love to see what you can do with this research in the real world. It's really something else." She seems so earnest and… _nice_… that's it hard to imagine her as the raving psychotic that the news programs paint her as. "It' not something that's for forestay since I'm not one for close combat fighting, but I think I could help you make this into something truly magnificent." She smile is wide and sincere as she asks, "Well, what say you?"

What _could_ she say? This woman – this beautiful, wealthy, intelligent, crazy, _criminal_ woman – was offering her the funding to make her dreams come true, to bring to light the things she had dreamed of since she was a small child. It was make her a criminal to join her. It would make her evil. Make her hunted and wanted. Make her one of those people walking the city with a secret so big it was life-altering for anyone who found out. But then… it was the only way to afford this caliber of research, to afford the many, many people she would need to employ for human testing and training. With no college or privately owned company willing to back her research was there anything she could do except agree?

"I say yes."

And with three simple words, her entire world changes.


	2. Begrudgingly Saving the World

**Title:** Love & Misadventure [Chapter 1: Begrudgingly Saving the World]  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 3,421  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

New York City was without a doubt the best city in the world to live in, there was no doubt in his mind about that. And Peter wasn't just saying that because it had skyscrapers tall enough to brush the clouds that made it absolutely perfect for the friendliest web-slinger this side of an alternate Earth. And he wasn't just saying that because it was city rife with superheroes. In a time where every major metropolis had its own go-to hero or heroine of choice, just a call or a button or a light in the sky away, New York had the most person-to-superperson ratio of any city in the world.

Which meant that Peter Parker could take a day to do some research without worrying that the entire borough would collapse in a crumbling heap of steel and glass and concrete if he took time to himself for a few damn hours. So it was only with a small amount of _I should be doing something else_ that he pursues the shelves for tombs for a period of time, only stopping to ask a timid looking girl stocking shelves for help once. It was a wonder that he found an employee here at all. This particular library, in addition to having the BEST café muffins in all of New York, was so crammed with regular New Yorkers studying and looking visciously sleep deprived that it was hard to move around the stacks at all. It was an absolute battle to find the books he needed, the last one having to be wrestled out of the surprisingly strong harms of an elderly woman who looked like she might stab him with a knitting needle.

The slam of the books hitting the chipped and nicked wooden table makes at least half a dozen people shoot him glares and the soft susurrus of library patrons shushing him surrounds the stacks.

"Sorry, sorry." He's sheepish with remorse as he takes a seat, the chair grating horribly against the ground as he pulls it out. Another apology as he red-faced and stammering manages to sit down, only knocking over the giant stack of books in front of him once as he struggles to compose himself. "My bad, sorry."

"Bro, just take a seat and shut up, it's almost mid-terms." The guy who spoke looks to be in his twenties, college age. He has the haggard appearance of someone who's been surviving on Adderall, Red Bull, and sheer force of will or the past few weeks. He also looked like he might gleefully and unapologetically kill the next person who interrupted him from his studies.

"Sorry," he says again, needlessly, because everyone has turned back to their books and computers and papers and starting ignoring his existence. With a sigh, he rubs at his eyes and turns to the stack of material in front of him. It's a clusterfuck of topics, ranging from two books for school (one on the History of the Peloponnesian War and one of Anatomy and Physiology), one for his continuing, fake, but still good for college applications, Stark Internship on an obscure theory off quantum mechanics, and three for what Ned called Superhero Research. It wasn't a very subtle or even remotely clever name, but it sure was accurate.

Two books are on the properties of sand and how they react to different variables and the last book was on engineering as he tried to think about how he could incorporate what he discovered into his weapons bank. Both were related to his current most irritating villain. Though nothing would stop his from dying the next time Sandman decided to turn into a spear made out of basically dust and skewer him. Last time he'd barely missed a vital organ and Peter still had the scar to prove it. Even as he looked over the material there he couldn't stop thinking about the newest Big Bad that had shown up a few months ago a few boroughs up from him. Inferno had popped up while Peter had been on a school fieldtrip upstate and she and the Human Torch had been going head-to-head for weeks now. It seemed to irritate him that he was no longer the resistant Firestarter, and the fact that Mr. Fantastic couldn't figure out how her powers worked was a big, old, matchstick in his side. It wasn't really Peter's business what was going on there, since they all tended to stick with their allotted areas. Then there was the Red Queen who was the basic overlord of half the criminal activity in New York, having a finger in every pot, so to speak. But she was never out in the open, so no one could track or capture her. If someone could take her down, half the superhuman criminals would be taken down with her. It wasn't necessarily his problem to worry about, but he couldn't help it.

He couldn't help but worry about the entire city he loved and called home. Everyone in it was, in some way, his responsibility. Even though he knew he should deal with his own adversary problem first, he couldn't help his churning thoughts.

"Kid, are you alright?"

He looks up, startled, into the dark brown eyes of a young woman, maybe just a few years his senior. Her voice has the clipped speech of someone who had gone to the very best schools, gotten the very best education. She's wearing a pencil skirt and white button-down, paired with conservative black pumps. A typical librarian look. He half expected her to have her brunette hair pulled back in a severe bun and be looking down at him over horn-rimmed spectacles. Instead she was looking at him with thinly veiled contempt, her eyes piercing and harsh. When he gaped at her in lieu of answering, she crossed her arms at him and one off her feet began to tap impatiently. One dark brow arches in a look of complete and utter irritation. Her ponytail swishes as she tilts her head at him. "Ummm…"

"Look, kid, I don't really give two shits if you cause a scene in the middle of a library, you do you. But I really need this job to, you know, pay bills, afford the food I need to live, and so on, so I'd really appreciate if you keep your antics to yourself. You'll put my useless job is in danger. So don't get me fired."

She's doing very little to keep her voice down for someone who's berating him for being loud and it's making heads turn and voices murmur. "I'm not a kid," he mutters, slouching down in his seat.

All that earns him is an eye roll. "All men are kids, that's just science." She stares at him expectantly, but that was such a close-ended statement that didn't make any sense that he literally has no idea what to say. He hadn't had such a headstrong girl speak to him since MJ had told him last summer that she thought he was the weirdest person she had ever met and ghosted him (an impressive feat since they went to the same high school). He didn't know what to say to girls. He could feel his face getting redder by the second as she stared at him. With a snort, the girl continues. "I'm Samantha St. Cloud."

Oh, that's what she was waiting for. "Peter Parker." He suddenly recognizes her surname with a start of clarity. Her family was _loaded_, like, a second house on the cape and a third on the West coast, kind of loaded. She'd probably gotten a pony for her fifth birthday present and had a BMW before she even had a driver's license. What the hell was she doing here? Doing what, for her, was slumming it down in the Lower East Side with the steaming, white-collar masses? "You work here?"

She understands immediately what he means. He's not asking in general, he's asking what a _St. Cloud_ is doing here working. A frown mars her features. "I don't think that's really any of your business, kid."

There's a tremble of real anger in her voice that takes Peter aback. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to – "

Samantha waves him off with an abrupt change of mood that makes his head spin. "Whatever, kid. Just don't be causing anymore scenes in the library or I'll sick the bouncer on you."

He blinks. "There's a bouncer?"

"That was a joke."

"Oh."

There's a beat of total and utter silence that must come as a reassuring change to the other patrons trying to achieve some amount of work this afternoon because he hears a few of them sigh in relief. Samantha nods her head at him, like she's validating the fact that she made her point and that he better listen, eyeballs his extensive collection of books with a wary and skeptical eye, then spins gracefully on one pumped foot and marches down into the stacks. He can hear her whisper shouting out commands at others: _Don't dog-ear the pages, you heathen. No one is allowed near the first editions, those are worth more than your meaningless life, Stevens! No food at the study tables. If you're going to make out, go home, or at least go to the periodical section in the back._ With a sigh, he tries to put the woman out of his mind and get back to work. He's moderately successful coming up with a game plan to take down Sandman, but it's tentative and he needs to run some tests before he can really put it into motion. Ideally he wonders if Mrs. Potts would let him use Tony's old lab, but the thought of asking her terrifies him so much he supposes he'll just have to settle for doing what he does best: winging it.

He's pondering if it would be worth it to just to call it quits and go on patrol tonight and hope it all works out in the end when there's a shattering explosion from outside that shakes the dust from the rafters and knocks a few hundred books off of their shelves. All of the students who had been shushing him mere hours before are screaming now and a more petty person would take this moment to shush them back, but fortunately for them, he wasn't a petty person. Leaving the books in a discarded heap on the table, Peter jumps up and runs towards the back of the library, where he knows for a fact that there's a side door to a service ally for the café that leads all the way back to the front sidewalk. He's dodging the terrified and crying people, trying to calm them and help them as he runs towards the back. But he also doesn't want them to follow him out the back entrance because he needs a few brief moments of solitude to flip into his suit.

When the door slams closed behind him, there's a brief respite from screaming and it's all the time he needs to trip out of his pants and release his suit out of his ring. Ah, technology. Gotta love stealing tech from those Flash novels. Thanks, DC! He's simultaneously kicking his shoes back into the ally as he slides around the corner to a scene of utter chaos.

Inferno – Inferno who hadn't been seen south of the Upper East Side since her first appearance – was here, outside the Hamilton Fish Park Library in the Lower East Side, on the complete opposite side of the world. She's wearing those fancy Iron Man style propulsion boots of hers that are allowing her to float several meters in the air. Peter would kill to know where she stole that tech from since it's like nothing he's ever seen before outside of Tony's lab. Her motto of choice for clothing seems to be "all black everything" because from her boots to her leather jacket to the mask that was covering the top half of her face and her hair, everything was a glossy black. It made the fire swirling around her fingertips stand out in stark relief as it whirls and dances like red whips.

"What the fuck?"

Her eyes slant down at him at the expletive and widen in momentary surprise, before they narrow in abject curiosity. "Well if it isn't our friendly neighborhood, Spider-Man, here to save the day from poor, little, old me."

With a few leaps, he's perched on a third floor ledge, bringing eye level with his new adversary. "This isn't your neighborhood," he says with authority, but still closely monitoring the smoldering fire swirling around her fists, "So I'm gonna have to ask you to leave, ma'am."

"Oh, _ma'am_, am I? So polite." She breaks into laughter and the fire at her fingertips flares up in response. "But you see, bug boy, there are a few things down here in the slums that I would _love_ to get my hands on." She flicks her fingers for emphasis, spirit fingers with sparks. Bring it on. Her smile is crazed. "So _I'm_ gonna have to ask _you_," her hands fist and turn into burning balls of flame, "to get out of _my_ way." He barely dodges the whip of pure fire that she snaps towards him. Holy shit. But even leaping for his life he notes that, although there's a gouge in the concrete window ledge like the Grand Canyon, she hasn't shattered the glass or broken the façade of the library in any way. There must be something inside she was trying to get her greedy, thieving fingers on. Typical. But nice of her to avoid structural damage.

"You know I'm not going to let you inside, right?" He struggles for bravado, but he's never faced Inferno in battle before. And, like most, living breathing humans, fire was something that scared the bejeezus out of him. Besides, he wasn't sure if any off his webs were engineered to combat whatever kind of heat her flames were putting off. He's only been monitoring her exploits in a purely pedestrian way, not as a possible foe, sure in the knowledge that she was smack dap in a different superhero's home turf. But he's Spider-Man, a hero, so he leaps towards her with a bravery he doesn't feel, swinging around and around, pinning her arms to her sides with the strongest web he has in his arsenal. When he comes to rest on top of a street light, he sees what he had anticipated, but had kind of hoped wouldn't happen. Her hands are glowing like coals, then her arms, then her shoulders; then his web melts off her like marshmallow sludge and she's on him before he can blink.

He's not trained in hand-to-hand, but his instincts are second to none, so he holds his own fairly well. Dodging is easy, his spidey-sense telling him when to duck, when to jump, when to dodge. But the fire is hot on his face and in his eyes and it makes him make stupid mistakes and he takes a knee to the ribs with a grunt. Instinct makes him send back a flurry of his own countermoves until they both fall back panting. "I won't… let you… steal anything else…" He gasps.

Inferno sighs, a little puff of air that's more of a pout than anything else. "Yeah, that's not surprising." She seems to deflate for a moment and for a second – a brief, glorious second – Peter thinks that this is going to be the easiest battle he's ever been in, but then he watches her eyes slide down to the people still streaming out of the library onto the street and running down the sidewalk. They're eyeing her in terror Her eyes light up. Crap. "But what's more important to you, spider boy: me taking something you don't even care about or your poor, precious New Yorkers?"

"No, wait!" He's reaching out - to stop her, to plead with her? – but it's too late, he's just a second too slow, fire is too fast. She flings her arm to the side and a fireball slams into a car, hurling it up into the air and down towards the people. The alarm blares with an ear-piercing jangle of sound. He's too late to stop her attack, but he just manages to stop the car before it crushes a mother and two small children. They're crying and thinking him but that's not the end of it. Laughing like a maniac, Inferno throws fireballs like a World Series pitcher and it's all Peter can do to keep the carnage from killing any bystanders. Cars are flying through the air and he's barely catching them before they strike pedestrians or buildings. When they both hear the crack of the building across the street as it starts to crumble, Inferno grins at him. "Shit." Guess he missed one.

No choice but to use all of his strength to try and keep that building – a parking garage, why, of all things? – from coming crashing down, no use but to ignore Inferno as she waves at him. "Toodleoo, kid." He'd already got his back braced against the structural beam, arms outspread, muscles taut with tension as he pushes back with all his might.

"I'm not… a kid…" He groans, déjà vu shooting through him at the statement. But his mind is focused on leaning back against the main support that's the only thing keeping hundreds of cars from tumbling out onto the street. He can hear sirens heading towards them and hopes like hell they're bringing a construction crew. Pedestrians are still running away, some are screaming, some are crying; others thank him as other shout curses. But it's still no good. All he can do is watch Inferno come to the ground and alight as daintily as a bird and walk into the library like she owned it. Five minutes later she marches back out, with a small bundle tucked under her arm. She grins over in his direction. "Bye-bye… _kid_." She positively purrs out the last word as her boots power back up and she's gone, vanishing around the next block even as police skid to a screeching halt on the scene.

"Hey kid, you're doin good, ya hear me? We got New York City Construction coming over as fast as they can in all this nightmare traffic. They'll get this supports back up in no time."

He was really getting sick of people calling him kid, it had been happening a lot today. A lot. "No problem, officer. Just doing my job." It's an effort to keep his voice steady, but he manages it. Just like he manages to hold the support steady until the construction crew arrive and just like he manages to hold it steady while they drive in some piece of heavy duty equipment that takes the weight off of Peter's back and shoulders so he can finally move. When he steps away he almost collapses as blood tingles back to all his limbs and only a kindly officer's quick reflexes saves him from eating pavement. His spine cracks as he straightens it for the first time in hours.

But all that time gave him amble opportunity to stare at the library across the street, for the wheels in his head to turn, for him to wonder if that was the last time he would see Inferno, though he doubted it. He wondered absentmindedly if the library would be open tomorrow. This one made a pretty good chocolate chip Frappuccino but the barista would but as many shots of espresso in it as you wanted. What a saint.

He really hoped they'd be open, because it seemed like he had a lot more research to do.


	3. She Doesn't Even Go Here

**Title:** Love & Misadventure [Chapter 2: She Doesn't Even Go Here]  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,872  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

It is a struggle to fall asleep that night with thoughts of Inferno running through his head like a hamster on a wheel that never slows, a storm that never stops spinning around and around inside his head like a hurricane, a black hole that's dragging his thoughts ever downwards and towards the center. But there's still Sandman to deal with, a villain who's been plaguing him since this past summer since he only pops up every few weeks and it's hard to get a handle on it. Midterms are fast approaching, which is an increasingly nerve-wracking process, since, no matter how many lives and buildings he saves and opponents he helps lock away, Aunt May would personally maim him if he failed even a single class. Not to mention what a fail in a class would do to his prospective college applications. There's the completely terrifying and probably misplaced worry about the Holiday dance in a few months – he knows it's not important in the scheme of things, but, honestly, he was seventeen and he cared _so much _about the dance it was sad. And then the endless panic that Venom will suddenly reappear from the woodwork in some new, larger host or some unknown variable adversary would suddenly manifest from the void and throw him for a loop and potentially kill him.

Idly, he wondered if he could perhaps call someone else and pawn Inferno back onto them. Johnny would probably love to handle it even though she was far south from his usual haunt since she was currently his number one enemy. Or maybe Mrs. Potts knew someone that had nothing else going on? He sighed. Who was he kidding? He wouldn't do either of those things. He would just stop sleeping in an effort to also learn more about Inferno's powers, then lose more sleep trying to rig up some sort of contraption or snare in which to entrap her. And if his plans didn't work he would either come up with a new plan or, well, he would die. Great.

For all his whirling thoughts, he finally did fall asleep that night, somewhere along the borderline of late evening and early morning. Those scant, restless hours of sleep didn't do any good diminishing the deep and hollowed circles under his eyes, but he had a eureka moment about ten minutes into his REM sleep about how to trap Sandman in the New York City Botanical Gardens glass conservatory building. The employees would probably be angry about the mess he anticipated it would make, but he theorized if he could trap Sandman in a big hourglass, he could slowly but surely muscle him into smaller and smaller glass containers. A relative Jafar.

So that was one problem solved, barring that he could pull it off. That only left midterms, the dance, Inferno, and any new baddies that wanted to appear. Cool. Coolcoolcoolcool.

With a groan that could be mistaken for a zombie lusting for brains, he manages to drag himself from bed and, in a bleary-eyed stumble, manages to brush his teeth and dress, managing to get all of the clothing on correctly after only two tries. He's sure he looks like death warmed over, but at least all his clothes are on right-side out and his breath doesn't smell like murder. So he's doing better than at a vast percentage of the population of the City. So snaps for Peter. School that day is a nightmare, but then, isn't it always at that age? He sleepwalks through most of it, though he answers his third period history professor's question of "What were the largest impacts of America's new impendence on the rest of the world?" with "Mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell." So, he'd had better days.

How he manages to get from Brooklyn to the Lower East Side without being run over, mugged, pickpocketed, or murdered is a miracle in and of itself. There must be someone watching over him. Or the new mayor really was keeping good on his promise to lower crime but legalizing superheroes. Or his extra sense worked even when he was relatively sleepwalking (his money was on this). That was good to know, actually. He only trips once walking up the steps into the library and he's all set to walk directly back to the card catalogue and start flipping through it until something useful pops up, but the sight of Samantha St. Cloud standing behind the counter, as immaculately pressed and put together as yesterday, but now with one fun, new edition. She was currently sporting a large and vivid _black eye_ and it stops him in his tracks.

"What the hell happened to your face?"

In retrospect that was probably like the tenth most tactful way he could have asked that and judging by the first startled, then annoyed look that crosses her face, Samantha is well aware of that fact. "I beg your pardon?"

"Uh… sorry, I mean – " He falters for the right words to take back the moment that doesn't make him sound like an ass, but also makes it so that she'll answer his question. The couple she'd been conversing with, a mousy girl with glasses and a tall, Adonis-esque man with a surfer vibe both make hasty excuses and exit the help desk. "Did someone hurt you?" _Like Spider-Man, maybe?_ He keeps that thought to himself, but it echoes very loudly inside his head. Pinging around like a tennis match between his ears.

"Did somebody _hurt_ me?" Peter can't really place her tone. It's surprised, yes, a little annoyed, too. But it sounds… shocked in a way that someone would jump immediately to that conclusion. Like, in the past she had shown up places with scrapes and bruises and injuries and others had not noticed or written them off. She seems honestly shaken that that is the first thing Peter thought had happened to her. "I…" She shakes her head as if to clear her thoughts. "No, I… I take a martial arts class, for… for self-defense."

Peter blinks. "Aren't those normally no contact?" In fact, he's fairly certain they are. At least the ones in this area that teach tiny, young women a martial art are.

This time she frowns. "What are you, an expert in martial arts?" She doesn't give him time to answer but he doubted she would have appreciated his answer in the affirmative. "Look, I take a class and after all of that… drama… yesterday," _What a strange word choice for almost dying,_ he thinks. "… I felt like I needed to blow off some steam. I got a little carried away, I guess, and my sparring partner didn't appreciate it." Her frown deepens at him. "Not that it's any of your business, kid."

There's that word again. Two women in the past two days had called him 'kid,' both at the same location. He tried to look at Samantha objectively, trying to see if she could perhaps fit the role of Inferno. They were both young women, Peter's age or near about. Both had dark eyes and dark brown hair, both were limber and toned, both pale. But then, young brunette women who were in shape were a dime a dozen in New York City. That description fit hundreds of thousands of people, he couldn't just start pointing accusatory fingers just because someone _kind of _looked like a foe. Such petite woman becoming a criminal was surprising. He was used to tall, terrifying imposing women like Red Queen.

But he always couldn't remember whether or not he had struck Inferno a blow, even a glancing blow, on the face yesterday afternoon. Peter could pack a wallop in this punches, he definitely would have left a noticeable bruise. He couldn't say for a fact if he had. But he also couldn't say with any sense of resolution that he _hadn't_. It made him wary.

"No I was just… worried…" That sounds like a lame excuse even to his own ears. It fell flat. It felt like a lie.

"Worried? You don't even know me." Her eyes are accessing and intelligent as they look him over. Peter doesn't like the analyzing gleam in her eyes as she stares at him. He knows she's seeing how haggard and tired he looks. Knows she can probably see how each breath is agony to him from the bruised and maybe cracked ribs he'd acquired yesterday. "Are _you_ okay?" Ah, shit.

"I'm good!" His voice cracks as he tries to set her at ease. It's too loud by half, as well, earning him several disapproving stares from those around him and a grimace from Samantha.

"Don't make me have to tell you to shut up again." Her tone is thick with the implication that, though a bouncer might not exist, she herself might in fact be throwing him out sometime in the near future. And she would enjoy it. Her eyes are as piercing as a hawk's as she stares at him.

"Right, yeah, you're right." He agrees to her previous statement only to move away from the uneasy moment, to break the silence and move the conversation along. "Um, I have a few things I want to look up, so I'll just go… do that…" He trails off waiting to see if she'll offer to help him, but she simply stares at him in bewilderment as he starts to slide away towards the card catalogue. He finally realizes that she's not going to offer her assistance and sighs, fully turning away from the help desk and heading towards the study lounge.

Oh well, so much for his amazing sleuthing skills. Ned was right, he really needed a guy in a chair, someone who could hack into phones and emails and social media, maybe monitor the library security cameras or something and watch Samantha and see what she was up to. Track her phone and see if she was really in a martial arts class. For the time being, he supposed he'd be doing all of his research up here a ferry and a subway ride away. Why did he have to find a case so far away from Brooklyn? Couldn't anyone swing by his neighbor ever, save him the ferry ride and the subway fare? That seemed like too much to ask, apparently. So it looked like he'd been spending all his free time at the Hamilton Fish Park Library.

And hopefully he'd learn more about Samantha St. Cloud, librarian by day, possibly evil villainous thief by night.


	4. I Like Ya Accent, Where Ya From?

**Title:** Love & Misadventure [Chapter 3: I Like Ya Accent, Where Ya From?]  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 3,071  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

In retrospect, he probably would have done a lot better the next morning if he'd been able to actually get a few good hours of sleep. But his spidey-sense went off at about 3 o'clock in the morning, making the hair on his neck stand up like a sudden shock had gone through him, and that was all she wrote for him and any potential shut eye. It's nothing more intense than a bank robbery, which, to some would be crazy intense, but for Peter Parker was something he could almost (and did) sleepwalk through. By the time he's hoisted up the criminals and caught them in his web (see what he did there?) and spoken to the police (_Yes, officer, I got them all. No, officer, they didn't get away with anything. No, I don't think this is connected to Inferno. No problem, just doing my job._) it's almost 6:30 in the morning and there's no point in heading home for what would amount to one hour of sleep max. So he trudges over to school and sits on the front steps in a daze, until Ned waves a hand in front of his face and almost gives him a heart attack.

"You okay, bro? You look like and extra on _The Walking Dead_. But like, with bad makeup."

Peter snorts. "Oh, yeah, just peachy, living the dream."

"Anything I can do to help?"

"Not unless you know a way to lure a giant sand monster into an hourglass without killing me and destroying a city landmark."

Ned stares at him, blank-faced and confused. "Uh, I kind off meant with, like, school." When it's Peter's turn to stare at him in uncomprehending blankness, he continues. "Like the Calculus homework that's due Monday or essays on a national hero that are due next Friday or something along those lines?"

A lightbulb. "_Shit_." With a laugh, Ned helps him to his feet, suggesting that they head to the library before the first bell goes off in thirty minutes. "You're a lifesaver, buddy."

"You know it."

So there went his relaxing morning. Instead of sleeping he was fighting crime and doing homework. Fun. Then eight hours of the tedium and hostility and peer pressure that is American High School, learning about an endless assortment of things that would never help him protect the world. Schools never taught him anything useful, except for that time him chemistry teacher had accidentally taught them how to make mustard gas and then had been subsequently fired. He'd never need mustard gas himself, but he wouldn't put it past Green Goblin or someone more crazy utilizing it. At least it was Friday though. And after his eight hours are up it's cheers to the freakin weekend.

So he spent his day proving that he could memorize the quadratic formula and the date of the Battle off Agincourt and proving, once again, that teenage boy stomachs could survive anything, including the questionable cafeteria food schools served.

"Is this supposed to be pizza?" Ned picks up the rectangle with its square cheese and pepperoni cubes and watches as gravity bends it downwards and all the toppings slides off onto his tray to land with a wet plop.

Peter glances up. "It's a travesty to serve that in New York City. Forcing us to eat that should be a hate crime."

"Yeah, no kidding." Ned drops the so-called food with a disgusted grimace and shifts his focus to his friend. "So what's your plan for after school? Going after the sand guy?"

Peter shrugs. "Yeah, if I can contain him, that'd be dope. Since I really need to get back to the Fish Park Library." When Ned looks confused, Peter leans forward and lowers his voice so he can whisper, "I think the cashier there is Inferno."

"_Inferno!_"

Ned's voice echoes like a cannon in the cafeteria, creating a few beats of utter and total silence before the conversation's around them resume. Peter tries valiantly to quiet him before they draw too much attention to themselves but the damage proves already done as Gwen stops at the end of their table and stares down at him in interest. "Inferno? What about her?"

"N-nothing!"

She arches a brow at him, disbelieving. "Are you all trying to figure out where she'll hit next? I've been thinking about doing a piece for the school paper on it. Or maybe a poll or a contest or something, I'm not completely sure yet."

"A contest would be cool," Ned says, earning a debilitating glare from Peter, who had been trying to end the conversation, not continue it further. "Every vote is a dollar and winner gets a prize."

Gwen's eyes light up. "Yeah! And the proceeds could all go to the holiday ball!"

Peter and Ned respond in perfect unison. "Ball?"

"The holiday party?" There's no response from the two boys. "It's a masquerade ball?" Still nothing. "Ugh, whatever! Boys are the worst, but thanks for the idea Ned!" She kisses him on the cheeks before she skips off, which makes his blush visible even with his caramel complexion.

He turns a perplexed smile to Peter, who's staring at him in consternation. "She kissed me?"

"Bully for you," comes the deadpan answer, while his mind is whirling with the thought of _What _would_ Inferno steal next? _There was literally no end to the priceless artifacts in New York City museums, let alone on display in state buildings or in private residences. If she was venturing from her usual stomping grounds all the way to the Lower East Side, there was absolutely no telling where she could strike next. His head slams down on the desk. "Dude, I really gotta go to the library now."

* * *

How he managed to get through the second half of the school day is a mystery, but Peter was pretty sure he failed his English pop quiz and really hoped that was the worst of it. Ned opted to tag along in case he needed backup with the supervillain bookworm and Peter let him. He wasn't sure what Ned thought he was going to do to help, but it was nice to have someone to talk to on the subway that wasn't screaming about the apocalypse at him. When they walk in, Samantha is manning the help desk again and Ned whistles lowly at the black eye that has, if anything, gotten even worse since yesterday and darkened to a near purple hue.

When she looks up at the sound of the bell and sees Peter, the hostess smile that had been affixed to her face falls away as abruptly as a gunshot. Her eyes as they looked at him are bright with dislike. "You again."

"Damn, bro, she's scary," Ned whispers to him as they walk up.

"Just… remember the plan," Peter hisses out of the side of his mouth. "I need you to go grab these books so I can talk to her and try and get some incriminatory information." Though Ned makes a face at the word _incriminatory_ he nods in agreement.

"H-hey there, Samantha, long time no see!" His boyish charm and innocence usually put people immediately at ease, but Samantha just stared at him with Spock-like blankness and waited for him to tell her what he was doing here, standing before her, for the third day in a row. "Uh, right. This is Ned."

She gaze slides over to his friend, taking him in with one long sweep of her eyes, top to bottom, as he waves at her and gives a hesitant, terrified smile. "Charmed, I'm sure." Her tone implies it is anything but.

"Ned, this is Samantha, St. Cloud."

Though his eyes widen at the well-known surname (after all, her father owned several high rises in the city, and one of her sisters was a model whose face was plastered across hundreds of the city's busses), all he says is, "Hey," in a choked off garble.

She turns back to Peter and he can sense that she's about ten seconds away from calling the cops for stalking or from murder, so he blurts out the reason he's here. "I wanted to look at some books, or," he clarifies, "I have some questions about some books, I guess, if anyone knew anything about them, I mean."

"Well, yes, this is a library. That's why most people come here."

"Right, yeah, right. I thought it would be faster, if maybe you could give me a hand finding them all." He could have looked them up himself, but now he wanted more time to observe and watch. He reaches into his pocket in a rush and shoves a torn out notebook page at her in a movement so fast it makes her flinch away from him, like a small animal. He freezes.

She takes the crumbled piece of paper, stained with coffee and pizza sauce from the cart across the street from his apartment, from his hand with a finely arched brow and a look of complete distrust. When she glances over the titles he's scribbled there, her brows shoot into her hairline. "What are you, on a fucking quest, kid?" She looks up at him in curiosity before her eyes continue to scan. "The only thing I can maybe help you find off this list is this second book on the treasures of New York." At his own look of surprise, she takes an affronted tone. "I'm a _St. Cloud_, I enjoy the finer things in life, no matter where I may be slumming it now."

_Yeah, but do you enjoy them enough to steal them?_ "I didn't say anything."

"Yeah but you thought it," she mumbles. "Actually, one of the treasure of New York was stolen yesterday, I believe it's mentioned in that book. One of the rarest books in the world." _Oh really?_ "An edition of the _Gutenberg Bible_ we had on display here for an exhibit. It has almost a five million dollar price tag attached to it. Very fancy." She's typing away on the computer as she speaks to him, occasionally glancing down at the paper in her hands. He's listening intently, but still jumps when her hands slam down on the keys. "Yeah, I don't know about the rest of these." She hands him back the paper. "If you want to find some of the stuff on pyro techniques, honestly, head to café and ask for Eric. He's major into fire, actually burned down his summer camp when he was twelve because he didn't want to do archery. He'll probably know where all the books about that kind of shit are and could honestly probably just tell you anything you wanted to know."

"Okay, that's too much information, but thank you."

"And if he tells you anything interesting be sure to let me know, because I've got a major lady boner for Inferno." Peter chokes on his next inhale and Samantha looks insulted. "What? She's hot. And she got great taste. Did you see the news report about that Tiffany broach she stole last week?" She makes a dramatic sigh. "That would match my complexion _perfectly_. I actually have a theory that I've been _trying_ to prove that powdered gemstones can be used in all manner of medical research. But now I'm poor so there goes ever trying to make that a reality."

There's a long pause as the two boys take that in. "Isn't that the broach that was a one of kind in how it was made?" Samantha and Peter both turn identical looks of shock towards Ned. "What? It's interesting."

"Yes!" Samantha is as giddy as Peter has ever seen her, actually smiling as she turns towards his friend. "The way the gemstones are adhered to the surface of the gold is revolutionary. It's strong enough that there's no way for them to come loose, but the bonding agent that was used is so delicate it can't be detected with the naked eye. It's very elegant. Very posh." Samantha turns back to Peter almost like an afterthought. "As for the last couple books, I'd go ask Callie Jones, she mostly stocks in the back, but she's interested in stuff like that. She could probably explain anything you want to about weird machinery." She turns back to Ned, ignoring Peter and clearly done speaking to him and fully intent on resuming her conversation with Ned about pretty, shiny things.

Peter is at a loss. "I – " This was not how this was supposed to go. His plan was falling apart. He looks to Ned, but his friend just shrugs and starts chatting it up with Samantha. Peter deflates and turns to head back into the rows of bookshelves. Apparently there was a new plan, and hopefully Ned was up to the task of speaking to a potential psychopath. He, evidently, had someone else to go and speak with.

* * *

Back here, towards the rear of the library, there is a faint, musty odor, the smell of ink and paper, dust and old thing. "Callie?" The girl who was perched so precariously on the ladder, reaching out to attempt and replace a book just out of fingertips reach teetered uncertainly and, with a yelp, slipped off the ladder. Her breath whooshes out of her as she lands in Peter's arms as he catches her as easily as if he catches falling girls every day. "Um…"

The girl he'd rushed over to save from a broken neck was petite, she barely weighed anything in his arms. Her uniform consisted of black slacks and a black turtleneck. Her hair and eyes were the exact shade of brown as mud, but the glasses on her face were crooked over freckled cheeks and a bewildered expression. She looked like a surprised little mouse. "I'm sorry!" Even her voice was squeaky. As concise and proper as Samantha's was. Maybe they'd done to the same boarding school? They both had the same respectable look too them, though Samantha's was more posh and Callie's was more girl-next-door.

Peter puts her down gently. "No, no, no, it's my fault!" He rubs at the back of his head sheepishly. "I shouldn't have scared you! It's just that, Samantha sent me back here for your help and I wasn't sure you were the right person…"

She frowns as she straightens out her glasses, slightly too large for her small face. "You were looking for me?"

"Uh, yeah, Samantha said you'd be the one to ask about all my tech questions." He doesn't let skepticism color his tone; she doesn't seem the type to know a lot about the kind of machinery he wants to ask questions about. But her posture straightens when he makes his statement and her eyes focus on him a little more closely.

"Tech questions?"

Peter fumbles in his pocket for the crumbled piece of paper, handing it to her as he speaks. "Yeah, I was looking for these books. I'm doing an extra credit project on some on Batman's tech," she snorts, but he continues as if he hasn't heard, "and whether some of them would be feasible to do in the real world."

"You don't want these books, they're written by guys who have never been inside a lab in their lives, but Alfonso Isaacs, he has a really good series of essays about the exact thing you're interested in." When there's nothing by silence to answer her statement she looks up and appears immediately unsure about the level of enthusiasm in the subject. "Um, my dad has a body shop that emphasizes in high-tech upgrades. You know, like flame coming from the exhaust or projector screens on the front window or cars that turn into boats." She shrugs. "Rich people upgrades."

It takes him almost a minute to stop gaping and respond. "So you… you know about stuff like this, too?"

"Yeah, not as much as my dad, but my whole family worked at the shop, until I moved here for school. I loved it though." She's staring down at her shoes as she speaks to him, ratty converse with mismatched shoelaces. She seems eager to get back to putting away books, but her voice when she speaks of her dad's garage is suffused with warmth and love.

He can tell she's not the type the carry on conversations with strangers, seeming to be more at ease in the stacks than up front where Samantha is. "I'm sorry if I bothered you…" He trails off because he doesn't know how to go back and insert himself in the conversation with Ned without looking like a total loser who couldn't hold up half the information gathering plan.

"No, it's okay, um… did you have any questions or anything?" She seems as surprised as he does when she asks, but she continues resolutely. "I could… help you, maybe?"

"That'd be great!" He grins and when her cheeks immediately turn red, he feels his own blush in response.

But she blinks up at him, shy and nervous, "I have a break in fifteen minutes?" She asks timidly and Peter thinks that maybe he got the better end of the plan after all. They'd still have to find time to talk to the pyromaniac in the coffee shop, but at least he wasn't trying to secret information out of a ticking time bomb. Callie here seemed like she might be just the kind of person who no one noticed, which were the exact kind of people who knew everything about everyone around her. So Peter theorized he could learn about Inferno's high tech equipment _and_ snoop a little about Samantha, all without being under her direct scrutiny. Solid.

"I'll meet you in the café."


	5. You Have the Moral Backbone of an Eclair

**Title:** Love & Misadventure [Chapter 4: You Have the Moral Backbone of a Chocolate Éclair]  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 2,459  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

Peter finds himself pleasantly surprised as he talks with Callie for the entirety of her fifteen minute break. The café was crowded with business executives in the area also on their lunch break, so they settled in at one of the tables in the back of the library, near the card catalogue. It's a very informative conversation. Growing up in a mechanics studio, she has a firm grasp of the ins and outs of moving parts. Though some off the intricacies of what he's asking eludes her, she is knowledgably about authors whose works can be of assistance to him. It's much faster than him pouring through a card catalogue.

And she knows Samantha, which is a very important bonus, in his eyes.

"Samantha?" Callie's bewildered tone suggests the abrupt topic change confuses her. "She's worked here, I guess two or three months? Since the start of the school semester, I think." _Just around the time Inferno made her debut, how interesting. _A bell rings from somewhere in the back and her head tilts towards the sound. "That's break time ending, I have to go, I'm sorry, I hope I was able to be of help?"

He immediately wants to soothe the worried expression from her small face. "Oh yeah! You were great! Um, are you off at all this weekend?" When she blinks at him just like a startled animal, he hastens to clarify. "To help me some more, I mean? With this?" He gestures at the mess of paperwork and notes he's made in a scant fifteen minutes. It's a dirty tactic that his Aunt May positively loathes, but he turns pleading, puppy eyes up at her and watches as she wavers and caves with a tentative nod. "Yes! Is noon okay?" Maybe, by some miracle, he could sleep in a little like a normal teenager on a Saturday

Callie graces him with a shaky nod and excuses herself, as timid and shy as a deer retreating back into the stacks like a forest. He makes quick work of shoving all of his mess into his cheap and tattered backpack, hurrying back to make sure Ned hadn't been murdered. Though he was fairly certain, almost positive really, that he would have heard the sounds of horrific maiming and bodily harm should it have come to that.

"You're back." Samantha's emotionless statement at Peter's reappearance is so charming, but at least Ned is still alive, and looking as though, somehow, he had enjoyed his conversation with her. Remarkable. "Was Callie any help?"

"Yeah, she's great." He tries to make it known to Ned with just his heads and some rather obvious tilts of his head that they should leave. "I'm meeting her here tomorrow to do some more research."

Samantha rolls her eyes as she leans away from the counter (and Ned). "Great, so I'll get to see you tomorrow, too?"

He hadn't anticipated that she would be here, as well, but better to keep her in his sights, he supposed. "Do you work every day?" He was honestly curious. How could she fit in all that thievery I she worked all the time?

"No, not that it's any of your business. I take online courses in college so Saturday morning I cram in all of the homework I've been setting aside all week."

"That sounds… smart."

She gives a bark of laughter. "Well, I could do homework every night, I suppose, but then I would never get to have any fun!"

"Fun?" Ned seems entranced by her high class looks and gusto. "What kind of fun?"

She winks at him roguishly. "Wouldn't you like to know?" The look on Ned's face says that yes indeed, he would like to know very much, but since Peter thought he already knew exactly it was she was up to, he started to pull his friend away rather belligerently by the arm. "Suppose I'll see you two tomorrow then?" She's asking about both of them, but she's staring directly at Ned who looks giddy with the thought. Peter doesn't even have the option to suggest that no, that's probably a Bad Idea, before Ned is enthusiastically agreeing. Samantha looks inordinately pleased. Peter wants to vomit.

"Alright, dope, can we _go_ now?" He forcibly has to drag Ned out the door and back towards the subway. "That was mostly a waste of time."

"What? You didn't learn anything?"

"Well, I didn't get to snoop around about Samantha like I wanted. But actually," he thinks back, "maybe Callie will know a little about her, I can try and ask tomorrow. What are going to be doing?" He doesn't bother to hide the skepticism from his tone or the narrow eyed glance he's sending his friend.

Ned shrug. "Talk to Samantha some more. I thought maybe I'd ask her to the café so that way I can maybe see if you had anything you wanted me to ask that Eric guy. He works tomorrow, I already asked."

Peter is so dumbfounded by that well-thought out plan that he walks into a lamppost. He rubs at what he is sure will become a find lump by morning. "That's actually… a really good idea." And it is. He can talk to Callie and research a way to build something to combat Inferno's fire all while secretly questioning her about her coworker, and Ned can flirt with his potential murderer while looking into items worthy enough to steal and (maybe) pyro techniques. Solid plan. He loved it. "Cool, so we can meet up tom-"

A loud explosion cuts him off (and honestly, he's really getting sick of that), followed by a great, booming laugh that he knows very well.

"Time to go nighty-night, children!"

He sighed. Sandman really was the dumbest criminal he'd ever faced.

"So I guess I'll see you tomorrow if you're not dead then."

Peter makes a face at Ned to show how much he appreciated that kind of humor, but nods nevertheless. "Yeah, I guess so." When they pass the next alley, no one notices as Peter ducks inside and never comes out. They never notice a blue and red figure dart up the side of the building and over it, heading towards the explosion

* * *

His master plan against Sandman works perfectly, with one minor flaw: Peter greatly underestimated the severity of his allergies. After trapping Sandman in the Conservatory, which he did perfectly, he tries to come up with a plan, since the machinery he needs to force Sandman into a smaller container does not exist yet. Unfortunately, he stood there for so long in the greenhouse that he found himself a congested mess. So an hour after his big battle he was ensconced in his bed, an undignified heap of sniffles and scratchy, red eyes. Meanwhile, uptown, Inferno spirits away a diamond necklace values at 1.2 million dollars from a private owner. All hail hay fever. The downfall of superheroes.

"Achoo!"

"Bless you." Callie looks at him across the small table with concern. "Are you sure you're up to this?"

Peter tries to answer, sneezes again instead, and nods. "Y-yeah." He has to swallow around the phlegm in his throat before he can continue. "It's just allergies, I'm good."

She seems unconvinced, but pushes her glasses up the rim of her nose, and nods, turning back to the papers before them. Peter had doodled a few sketches of some ideas for what he was saying was for "an upgrade on the bike he used to use to deliver pizzas," but that sounded hollow even to his own ears. Callie, never called him out on it, seeming to just be overwhelmed with the attention she was receiving at all.

"Callie… that's a cute name."

Her freckles disappear under her ruddy, startled flush. "I… it's short for Calliope, my mom was an archeologist, so…" She shrugged. "Callie is just more normal, I guess, for work and stuff."

"Calliope." He rolls the name over his tongue, testing out the syllables. It's musical. "I like it!" When she stammers out a thank you, he shifts focus. "So how long have you known Samantha?"

She glances up, startled, a small frown marring her features. "Samantha? Um, since she started? I started her last summer…" She trails off, staring at him expectantly, waiting to see if he's going to ask her more. She doesn't seem overly concerned that's he's asking her about her pedigreed coworker, probably getting questioned about a St. Cloud in this neighborhood fairly regularly. But he needs to phrase his questions so they seem natural, not suspicious. So he switches the direction of his questions for a moment.

"And you?" She blinks. "What made you work at the library?"

"Oh, well, they were hiring." Her tone is confused, like she'd never thought about it before. Her quizzical expression reminded him of MJ when she was watching some sort of social interaction between two people that she didn't understand. "So I applied."

"I don't have enough time for a job." _Unless you count being a leotard wearing vigilante_. He laughed. "Do you like it?"

She shrugged. "I'm just trying to save up for college."

"You're in college?" She looks younger than him, so that's a surprise. Samantha looks more college age than she does.

"Uh, no, I…" She looks down, fiddling with some paper and drawing doodles in the margins. "I graduated high school last year, a year early, but so far none of my college choices have accepted me."

"You're seventeen then?" That makes more sense. She nods. "That's cool! You must be really smart then!"

Her face turns red as she keeps her gaze firmly facing the table. She clearly isn't one to speak much of herself. Though a smart girl like her, weird she couldn't get into a college of her choice. She probably had really high standards. She was starting to fidget uncomfortably, so he turned the subject back to his main interest.

"Strange to see someone from the upper class down here working, isn't it?" He keeps his tone nonchalant as he scribbles some notes on a scrap of paper.

He can feel the hesitation before she answers. "Well, I don't think she really had a choice." When he makes a sound of interest, urging her to continue without seeming like he was prying. "From… from what Samantha has said, her family kicked her out."

Peter does look up at that. "Really? What for?"

"Eric – do you know Eric, the guy in the café? – he told me that she was dating someone her parents hated. And when she refused to break it off with him they cut her off from everything. It's been… really hard for her." She glanced behind her and when she turns back, she leans across the table, close enough that Peter and count the freckles on her cheeks. "Well, Eric told me that she had to move in with her boyfriend when they gave her the boot, that's why she's down here, and that… that they fight a lot."

The way she says the word _fight_ makes Peter sit up and take notice. "Like _fight_ fight?"

She nods. "She comes in here bruised up a few times and Eric says it's from her boyfriend."

Peter deflates a little. Maybe Samantha wasn't Inferno. An abusive boyfriend would explain her black eye and why she was (if she really was, at any rate) taking a martial arts class it explained why she lived down here. "That's awful."

"Yeah, apparently he refuses to work so that's why Samantha is here a lot. She's not just trying to pay for her online classes, but she's trying to pay all of the bills because when she doesn't he gets really mad." He tone implied exactly what happened when Samantha's boyfriend lost his temper. "From what I hear though, it's nothing new. Her father sounded like a real jerk." It's the most emotion Peter's heard from Callie since they first spoke. "She thought it was hilarious when her father's collection of Monet paintings were stolen by Inferno."

"Those belonged to her family?!" He sits up straight in his chair, knocking his phone off the edge of the table in his haste. That was Inferno's first appearance. And to target her potentially abusive father…

"Yeah, family heirlooms or something. Samantha said her father was really arrogant about the whole thing. Of course, he made off with most of the insurance money, so I doubt he cared too much." She smiled wryly. "But she did tell me that one of the paintings that was stolen was something her parents had just purchased so it wasn't insured yet. So at least there's that."

That was all… so, so interesting. And so, so perfect.

"So is that why she likes Inferno so much?" Callie looks surprised. "She told me yesterday."

"Oh, yeah, well I guess." The subject seems to make her uncomfortable. "She like keeps newspaper clippings and stuff. It's not really… healthy, but Inferno is like her role model or something."

Interesting, very interesting.

"She's a girl who, in Samantha's words, kicks ass and takes names."

"And takes things."

Callie glances up, then nods. "Yeah, that, too. I think Samantha wishes she could get her hands on some of those things. According to her it's basically a top tier list of the most expensive items in the city. Very posh, very high end."

All of the pieces were starting to fall so nicely into place. A rich girl who was kicked out by her potentially abusive father. Suddenly finds herself struggling to make ends meet with her equally abusive boyfriend. Finds herself a job with a chatterbox pyromaniac and a tech savvy girl who just wanted a friend. So she takes a self-defense class to pick up a few tricks and then she decides to stick it to the man. And then decides that she likes stealing pretty, expensive things, so keeps it up.

Yeah, that all fit very nicely.

Now, how to tell Ned that his treasure-obsessed crush was wanted for fifteen counts of robbery and disturbing the peace?


	6. Triggered

**Title:** Love & Misadventure [Chapter 5: Triggered]  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 678  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

That boy was asking far too many questions, he and his friend both. It was becoming bothersome. It was becoming worrisome. What had happened recently to make him start asking so many prying, nosy questions? All she could think about was the theft of the _Gutenberg Bible_. He had been here then, by himself. He had seen Inferno, been in the melee and chaos of the escaping masses. Had he seen _her?_ Did he know who she was?

No, that was ridiculous. If he knew her secret, he surely would have gone to the police by now. Right? Why would you sit on information this large, this _life-altering_, without telling others? Hell, he could probably sell that information to all of the newspapers in New York, or a global news channel and make a pretty penny. Not as much as she was making of course, but still, a lot of money for a teenager.

Maybe he just suspected. And that was why he had recruited his little friend to come in with him and start interrogating the staff, divide and conquer.

She couldn't deal with this right now. There was too much at stake in her life. She couldn't get caught. Not only would Anita absolutely kill her, but she almost had enough money to complete her research. Every item she stole, Anita gave her a cut off the profits she made selling it on the Black Market. She hit the places and grabbed the goods Anita told her to, things she had buyers for. The one and only time she chose her own target, her first target, was when she gave the wretched and malicious Thomas St. Cloud exactly what he deserved. But now she was only a few big score away from being able to afford everything she needed to prove that her studies had all been worth it. So her research – and her life – were on the line. Because if she got caught, Anita would never let her live long enough for the authorities to have a change to interrogate her.

But this… this _boy_… was going to ruin all of her well laid plans. If he kept showing up here every day other employees would notice. They would know he was asking around and prying and sticking his nose in where it didn't belong. Then they would start asking questions. They would wonder why he was so interested in her, and in Inferno. More and more people would start to put those puzzle pieces together. How she was never around when something went missing. How she perfectly fit the profile for a criminal. How she needed the money. Then cops would come snooping, reporters, camera, agents. Nosy, prying eyes.

Men would come who laughed and laughed at some young kid telling them a girl working in a library was the thief they couldn't catch, had been trying to catch. They would insinuate that she wasn't smart enough – a young girl out in the world for the first time, on her own. They would list all the reasons why it didn't make sense and wasn't possible. And when no one could poke a hole in their arguments, when it proved that little, nerd, Peter Parker was right and their friendly, neighborhood library was a criminal, they would come with their guns and their power dampeners and their tranquilizer darts, and they would take her.

She couldn't have that, now could she?


	7. Get Your Head in the Game

**Title:** Love & Misadventure [Chapter 6: Get Your Head in the Game]  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,941  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

A news report wakes him from the sleep of the dead Sunday morning. "Sandman is still trapped within the New York City Botanical Gardens Conservatory, where he has been since late yesterday afternoon. When questioned, officials merely stated that Spider-Man was currently working on a means to remove Sandman once and for all. Until such a time, the Botanical Gardens will remain unfortunately closed, but hopefully the situation will resolve itself before the Christmas lighting ceremony in a few short weeks."

Peter groaned as he rolled out of bed. What a way to be woken up and reminded of the things he still had to do.

"You're finally awake, sleepyhead. I was beginning to think I'd have to call the coroner." His Aunt May glances around from her seat on the couch, watching as he staggers into the room. The news report is still droning on behind her – _Inferno sightings have been on the rise in the past several weeks, prompting insurance companies to refuse to insure high valued items until the thief is caught, citizens are – _as she smiles at him. "But you're still alive, I see."

When he flop onto the couch like a sack of potatoes, he murmurs something nonconsequential in assent. He's staring bleary eyed at the television as images of previously stolen items slide across the screen, along with their monetary value. With the net worth of all the items she's stolen, Inferno could purchase a small country, or a string of islands in the South Pacific. It was mind-boggling.

"_Now we take to the streets of New York to see what its people think of the latest in this string of high-stakes robberies. Ma'am, what do you think of the crisis Inferno places upon this great city?"_ He watches as a blonde and buxom reporter, with lips like red slashes across her face, shoves a microphone into the face of a woman who looked as if she could care less about a thief on the loose. And his assumption proved completely correct when the woman cast a flabbergasted look at the reporter and answered. _"Inferno crisis? I don't have anything to steal! I think it's good to keep the rich bastards on their toes for once! I care that my kids fieldtrip to the Gardens got canceled because it's stuffed full of raging sand monster! And –_" The television clicks off with a shock of static.

"That's enough of that nonsense now." His aunt shifts until she's facing him on the couch, her eyes are compassionate and concerned. "Are you alright?"

He slumps lower in his seat, struggling for how to answer that. He's tired, so tired. But – "Yeah, I'm fine, Aunt May." – he had things to do. He forces a cheerful grin on his face. "I've got a project to finish today, so I'll be over at Ned's."

Hazel eyes regard him with thinly veiled worry. "If you're sure…" He nods encouragingly and she sighs. "Well, alright then. Shwarma later?"

"Deal!"

* * *

Most of what he actually does at Ned's house is build a Lego Hogwarts (complete with student figurines) and lamenting his Sandman/Inferno crisis. Finally, he realizes that he better get a move on and gives a heart wrenching moan as he stands. "Well, I gotta be hitting the old, dusty trail." He sneezes, sniffs, and gives Ned a half-hearted fist bump as he forces his aching muscles to comply with leaving. Everything aches. His ribs were still bruised from his rumble with Inferno, so fighting Sandman yesterday didn't do him any favors. Not a single part of him was looking forward to heading back into the war zone the greenhouse was going to be. "Wish me luck."

"Good luck." But Ned's focus is already completely centered back on how to accurately represent a Quidditch match in play, so he never looks away from his task.

It's a long walk to the crowded ferry from Ned's apartment building and on a Sunday afternoon, getting onto the boat is like trying to shove an extra sardine into an already full tin can. He can barely breathe, let alone move. No one ever tells you about this aspect of superhero life: the tedium of continued regular travel. It's excruciating. So when the ferry docks, he decides to forgo the subway, not sure he could deal with another jam packed ride. He ducks into the first alley he came across and in less than no time, he's swinging through the city he loves.

There's nothing like it, nothing on earth. Granted, he doesn't have a frame of reference for anything other, average adrenaline junkies did to spike up their endorphins. He's never gone sky-diving or bungee jumping. He'd never ridden a horse over a high jump or gone parasailing or driven a car at over 100 miles per hour. But he had imagined those thing when he was little and wanted to grow up and be an adventurer, see the world, make a mark. He couldn't really go see the world now (his alter ego basically locked him into the Manhattan area for the foreseeable future), but nothing he could imagine could ever top this. The freefall of falling towards traffic, of swinging between taxis and bicycle delivery drivers. Of flipping over a skyscraper, with nothing before you but sky, sky, sky. Of pigeons scattering before you as you run across a high-rise crane and leap off the edge into the void.

It was heaven.

But as he lands with a thud on the glass ceiling of the conservatory, he contemplates the downside of his powers. When he can't get through to an adversary (which is almost always) and they force him into a situation like there, where he has to finally trap them, put them away. He hopes he is never in the situation where he has to choose between life and death for a foe, but he's young, he's only been doing this for a few years, he knows his good luck in that department can't possibly hold out much longer. He just wishes more criminals would listen to him, that there was more to life than crime, that he could help them. But they were all set in their ways, self-righteous and determined, adamant that the choice they were making was the only one left to them.

So here he was again, trying to force another felon into his cell. Great. And judging from the shouting and shaking glass, Sandman wasn't going to make it easy for him. Double great.

With a sigh and a muffled curse, he flips the lock on one of the windows on the roof and slips inside.

"Little boy! How _dare_ you think to trap the great – "

"- great Sandman, yeah, yeah, I know, I've heard all this before." Sandman seems taken aback, his mouth actually falling open as he froze and watched Peter mock him. "I don't suppose you'll make this easy for both of us and just turn yourself into over to the police?" When Sandman gave a roar and lunged forward, Peter sighed. "Yeah, I didn't really think that would work." And he leaps into the fight.

The struggle, is that they are currently in the largest greenhouse, which is linked to smaller and smaller glass rooms by small hallways. Peter has to force Sandman through each subsequent hallway, into the smaller rooms. Once in the smallest room, there the real challenge would begin. Peter knew, from having creeped on the gardens on their website that the small room at a collection of topiaries and statues and, luckily for him, a few art displays that had been set up only a few short weeks ago of orchids and air plants growing inside colored glass bottles.

Rooms one and two went fairly simply. Peter just darted around like a demented hummingbird, calling out insults about Sandman's powers and general intelligence, until the beast followed him through the hallways, like a cat following a laser pointer. Like a dumbass. When they're finally in the smallest room, Peter tugs the door closed with a length of web, blocking the exit, gearing up for the final showdown.

"Alright now, genie, time to go back into your bottle."

"No one traps the Sandman!" His eyes are full of glittering hate, shining like chips of bright, beach sand.

"Bro, I've had you trapped inside this plant hotel since yesterday." He dodges a large potted fern that's hurled his way. "Come on bro, I'm tired, can't we just end this?" Another flurry of items is tossed at him, making his leap up to the ceiling to avoid being struck. "Guess not." He sighs. Couldn't he fight someone that was mostly human for once, not a rhino or a sand monster or a crocodile? Just like, a dude, with some powers. Was that so much to ask?

_Inferno seems pretty human…_ The thought crosses his mind before he can stop it, and, without warning, he's thinking back to his brief fight with her, logging the differences in her combat style from his current fight.

"Ah, shit!" His wondering mind gives his opponent an opening to reach up and send a tendril of sand looping around his ankle and he barely has time to brace himself before he being thrown across the greenhouse to crash into a large display of terra cotta pots. The cracking of the pottery echoes the cracking of his ribs, which immediately flare up in pain and continue to throb incessantly as he wheezes in a breath. "Ow."

"Silly, human child, why not give up? You're no match for me!"

"Oh dear, God, make it stop." He forces himself to his feet, spits the blood out of his mouth, and holds up his fists. "I'm sick of listening to you blabber, let's finish this."

Sandman lets out a booming laugh and begins to compress in on himself, turning his clenched fist into a sharp, dagger-like point. "I will pierce your foolish heart, little boy!" And he throws himself forward like an arrow loosed from a bow, his entire body forming a javelin that shoots towards Peter had a superhuman speed…

… just as Peter had expected.

With the quick reflexes that had saved his ass more times than he could count, he reached out and grabbed a bottle from the display hanging beside his head. Holding in front of his heart, Sandman's aim forced him right through the eye of the bottle, just like threading a needle. When the last particle of sand flies past the rim, Peter seals the clear bottle with a blob of web and holds it up to eye level. He can just barely make out the tiny orchid that had once called the bottle home, it's so full of sand now. Shifting sand, that's making faces and screaming at him in wrath.

"Itty bitty living space," he says with a laugh. It immediately turns into a hiss and a grimace as his ribs scream at him in agony. "Fuckity ow."


	8. Got Injuries Coming Out the Oiseaux

**Title:** Love & Misadventure [Chapter 7: Got Injuries Coming Out the Oiseaux  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 2,220  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

Theoretically he could have headed to the library to do some recon. But he didn't think his bruised and bloody face would be welcome in public. The hospital had pain killers, glorious pain killers, but they also asked questions. So until he had someone on the inside of the medical field like Daredevil did, that was right out. Ned would panic. He was good at that. So would Aunt May. She was amazing at it. So that meant, his only option left (save crawling to Mrs. Potts and asking for help) was to sneak into his own room without his aunt seeing and hide there until he could sneak out tomorrow.

That plan goes even better than his plan to capture Sandman (whose bottle he'd underhand tossed at a startled, young police cadet, who'd hot-potatoed it for one terrifying moment, before heading off to his station with it). Aunt May didn't hear him come in, so he had plenty of time to shower, poke at his probably broken ribs, hold back his pained sobs, and collapse onto his bed. When she knocked on his door later, he let out a series of very convincing allergy-esque sneezes, said he didn't feel well, and was going to try and sleep it off before school tomorrow. She didn't pry and let him to his own devices the remainder of the evening. Score! He can muscle out a plan to convince Samantha to give herself up.

Of course, that doesn't happen. His head hits the pillow or five seconds and he's immediately, and deeply, asleep. And that's the way he remains until his alarm starts blaring at him the next morning.

* * *

The booming chords of _Heat of the Moment_ make his eyes shoot open, even as he's scrambling around for his phone to make the noise stop. After mindlessly mashing a few keys, there's finally blessed silence and he slumps back onto his mattress with a hiss. He hurt _everywhere_. It hurt to breathe. There was no way he was going to make it through school like this today. Groping his phone again, he blinks at the screen for a moment, waiting for it to come into focus, before shooting Ned a text.

_Hey, bro, can u cover 4 me at school, 2day?_

The reply is almost immediate.

_Sure, what's up?_

_ Nothin' just wanna go back to the lib. and look some shit up._

_ Gotcha_

The typing ellipses pop up again, so Peter waits a moment to see what else he has to say.

_Saw that Sandman was caught. U ok?_

_ Not dead, but been better_

Ned's next reply is a thumbs up gif, so Peter clicks his phone back to black and forces himself to sit up. Ugh. Getting to the Lower East Side in his condition is going to be a trial in and of itself, but he doesn't have much of a choice. He needs to look up some medical textbooks and make sure he doesn't have a rib sticking through his heart or something and that he won't die before midterms. And while there were libraries down here in Brooklyn, none of them were staffed by the next villain on his To Be Arrested list. So it was Hamilton Fish Park Library or bust.

The rocking waves on the ferry make him nauseas and he struggles to keep his breakfast down. But it's a thousand times better than the shoulder jostling baggage car that is the subway. It's the Monday morning rush hour and the tube is full of hundreds of New Yorkers in business suits on their way to work. They're all swinging briefcases and elbows with reckless abandon and he hasn't seen a single person look up from their cellphones his entire thirty minute commute. All they've done is shoulder check him at every given opportunity, making his ribs scream in agony at every violent touch.

When he jostled off the subway at his stop, he's almost delirious with pain and he makes a valiant effort to hightail it to the library before he finally falls unconscious from pain. If he had only a little while to just sit and relax for a little bit, maybe his body would be able to pull itself together and finish knitting together some of his broken bones. He didn't heal as fast as someone injected with a superhuman serum or someone who was a literal god, but thanks to a lab mishap he healed faster than most people did. But there were limits to the most enduring self-control while he waited for that to happen.

He vaguely hears someone call out in shock when he stumbled through the rotating door and shuffles past the help desk like a zombie. This continues until he's made his way all the way to the café, where he manages to place his order ("One venti chocolate chip Frappuccino, no whipped cream, add two shots of espresso and one double blueberry muffin, toasted with butter."), manages to punch in his debit card pin correctly on the third try, and thump into a cold, metal chair, where he immediately swallows half his muffin and two Excedrin Migraines with a few gulps of Frappuccino.

"What in the literal fuck happened to you?" He look up slowly, trying to feel the healing power of espresso and meds slowly shifting through him, to the half quizzical, half irritated face of St. Cloud. Her arms are crossed and her fingers are tapping methodically against her upper arm. Hazel eyes are darting across his face, taking in his worn expression, the dark circles under his eyes, the hunched way he is sitting in his chair, his slow, deliberate, wheezing breaths. "You're not going to like… die on my shift are you?" He tone implies that she wouldn't really care, but it would be an obnoxious to have to deal with the after effects with her superiors.

"I'm… fine."

"Yeah, that's what I said when I came home from prom after little Miss Sugar Queen Elizabeth Windsor spilled fruit punch on my Valentino white bag." He blinked. "For the record, I was not fine. That bag was expensive and Eliza was a bitch with a trust fund. That last part isn't really relative except for the fact that she's probably living off of that trust fund now and I'm here with a dying person in my coffeehouse."

That was… so much for him to take in, so he'd start with the easiest thing to deal with. "I'm not dying."

"Then you must already be dead because you look like shit warmed over," she says as she pulls out a chair with an ear grating scrap against the metal floor and plops into it. She steeples her arms and rests her head on them, staring at him intently. "So what _did_ happen to you, kiddo? Someone steal your lunch money?"

He makes a face. "Oh, ha ha." He shifts in his seat a little, holding in a grunt and grasping his ribs a little tighter. "_No_. no one took my lunch money. I just, uh… fell down the stairs."

The look on her face says she doesn't buy that as far as she could throw him. "You sound like the damn tagline for spousal abuse…" She glances away and mutters under her breath, "And I should know."

He could comment on that, in fact, he's fairly certain that he should, but it's not readily apparent to him if Callie should have been blabbing all of Samantha's boyfriend problems to a boy she'd just met, so he lets it go. "Yeah, okay, but I don't want to talk about it. I'm just here to look up some home remedies."

"For what, internal bleeding?" He makes another sarcastic face at her and takes a few more gulps of precious coffee. "And explain to me for the first time why you don't just go to the hospital?" Peter's deadpan expression is all the answer she's going to get. "Well, okay, fuck me, then. That's definitely not fishy at all in any way." She stares at him for a long minute. "Is it your ribs?" When his brows shoot up, she shrugs. "You're breathing like you're in a Lamaze class, so unless there's something you're seriously hiding from the world, it's your ribs."

"I… I just want to make sure I'm not bleeding internally, because it kind of feels like I am."

"Are you coughing up blood?"

"… No."

"And this happened…"

"Yesterday…"

She shrugged. "I wouldn't worry about it then. It seems like it's your ribs, maybe just bruised, potentially fractured. But, honestly, the hospital wouldn't do much for you in that case anyway, just wrap you up as tight as a pug in a rug. So, really you can just bind yourself up and take it easy for a little bit and you'll be good. Eventually. Duct tape works really well – sticks even when it's wet, not a lot of give. I do recommend wearing, like, a wife beater or something underneath the tape, because otherwise, _damn_, it will hurt coming off."

"Um…"

"Martial arts class."

"Yeah, okay." Peter stares at her across the table, wondering how many times she's had to bandage up her ribs in the past, wondering how many injuries she nursed herself instead of going to a hospital or clinic. He'd been watching YouTube videos of Inferno every spare second he had, trying to see where her past injuries were, where her most recent injuries might be. The trouble was, her modus operendi was all smash and grab, usually taking place late at night. She very rarely was in big one on one combat, all or nothing brawls. She was very rarely caught on camera. She was like fucking Catwoman but with fire and kicky boots that let her levitate. The biggest takeaway he could find from his late night study of her was that she usually always targeted items that were owned by men. And the one speech that had been caught on film as she stole an original Rolex in brought daylight off the wrist of the Wall Street man who owned it had her spouting a lot of anti-masculine mumbo-jumbo. "Are you… injured a lot?"

She shrugged again. "Sometimes." She turns and stares idly towards the café display where Eric is leaning over the counter and flirting with a pretty redhead. The girl is giggling madly as he brushes her hair behind her ears and murmurs to her too softly for others to overhear. "My life is… harder than I thought it'd be, you know, growing up rich and all." She sighs. "But I refuse to go crawling back to my parents for help."

Okay, so that might explain her lack of visits to the hospital. Her abusive boyfriend might explain all of those injuries, since he definitely didn't by her martial arts cover story, but it was also an excellent reason for her to turn to a life of crime. In addition to having fallen from a life of high class living, to being a lowly employee working for minimum wage. So it could really go either way.

"Besides, they would have thrown an absolute hissy fit if they would have gotten a call from the hospital that time I needed forty-five stitches in my arm," she says as she pulls back the sleeve to her right arm and reveals a puckered and ragged scar to his gaze, "so free clinic for the druggies it was." When she catches sight of his face, jaw slack and slightly terrified, she smiles coyly. "We were learning to use daggers in class, I slipped."

But Peter was barely listening to that, as he stared at her in sudden and glowing clarity. Instead, he was thinking of one of the videos he'd watched of Inferno, as she too, slipped during a fight. But she didn't slip in a martial arts class where they were apparently teaching young adults to use sharp, pointy objects. No, she was struck by a glancing blow from a police net and went spiraling head over feet through the glass windows of a nearby skyscraper. The video footage was shaky and the cellphone quality was shitty. But even with the air full of dust and debris and focus going in and out as the recorder trembled, Peter could see that when Inferno staggered from the wreckage of the window, when she pulled herself up and out by one straining arm, that arm had a jagged and bleeding, vivid wound down the forearm.

Samantha St. Cloud was Inferno. There was no doubt about it.

So all he needed now was a plan.

Ah, fuck.


	9. In This Essay I Will

**Title:** Love & Misadventure [Chapter 8: In This Essay, I Will...]  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 4,525  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

Okay, a plan. How hard could it be to come up with a plan when he knew the regular, alter ego of the villain he was facing? How often did that happen? Like, never. So now he had the potential to come up with a plan where no innocent bystanders were caught in the crossfire. He could learn all about them and convince them to give up their life of evil and crime and join his side. Or at the very least, just stop stealing things. Maybe even give them back? No that last part would never work. That shit was already sold and scattered across the planet by now. Maybe even the universe, he didn't know how the Black Market worked.

But like, he could convince someone to join the side of good, right? There was a lot to offer someone. A life of secrecy. Always being worried that your friends and family would be kidnapped, tortured or killed because some villain found out about your secret identity. There was also the worry that at any moment the police or the government would turn against you and declare that you yourself was the criminal. So, yeah. There was tons of awesome things to look forward to if someone put away a life of crime and switched teams.

"Okay, when I look at this objectively, there a literally so many cons here." Peter stares down at his notebook with thinly veiled disgust. The _Con_ column was chock full of stuff: from _no pay_ and _no holidays off_ to _always on call_. While the _Pro_ column currently had two entries: _Superpowers_ and _the Jamba Juice on 3__rd__ street gives heroes in costume free smoothies_. He crinkles nose at the paper. The best thing about it is the doodle he drew of Batman yeeting Robin at the Joker. "Well according to this, apparently I should switch to a life of crime." When he leans back in the chair, his back cracks. "I wouldn't have to worry about my stupid essay then. Or go to a ball. Who the fuck throws balls anymore?"

Okay, so logic probably wasn't going to win over Inferno, since, logically, according to paper, being a superhero was kind of the worst. Then the question was, what other method was there to convince someone to switch sides if cold, hard facts wouldn't do the trick?

He couldn't bribe her. Not only did he himself have nothing to his name by a subway pass and maybe twenty bucks, but trying to bribe a thief seemed a little counterintuitive. She had stolen more money than he would have make in his lifetime, more money that he could imagine. She's probably laugh in his face if he offered her money.

There was a small possibility of threatening her if Peter could figure out exactly how her gear worked. Her books he could figure out pretty quickly, honestly, that propulsion technology was becoming pretty common in recent years. That might make it had to track where she'd gotten the parts for said tech, but it also meant he could easily construct something that would disrupt their wavelength and short-circuit the entire system, rendering them inert. But he had absolutely no idea about the fire. It didn't seem as if her powers worked the same way Johnny Storm's worked, but it still could be she had been in a kind of accident and had come out unscathed except for a new propensity for flame. Or it could be tech that he didn't understand. Until he did, threatening her seemed like it might end poorly for him. And it didn't really sit all that well with him either. He was a hero, he should be helping people, not bullying them. The world had enough bullies at the moment.

He could try and trick her, but Peter wasn't that clever. He'd probably trip and wind up in his own trap.

And, honestly, he wanted her to switch sides and do good because she _wanted_ to. Not because she was forced to. In his opinion, those that were forced to the side of righteousness without feeling very strongly about it themselves were usually the ones to tear those organizations apart from the inside. You couldn't expect totally loyalty from someone you didn't completely trust. So he had to completely trust her. Had to make her _see_ that she was doing wrong and make her _want_ to change her ways. For good.

Maybe…

His eyes stray to a poster on his wall. It's of a movie that came out last summer depicted a masked hero and a scantily clad woman looking up at him adoringly. She'd been his biggest enemy at the beginning, turning evil because her husband died. And the hero, along with fighting off the Big Boss, made her see that she was a good person. They fell in love. She became a hero, fighting for the side of truth and justice.

Maybe he could make her see without her even knowing who he was? Was such a thing even possible? Even in _The Superhero and Me_, they only spoke as hero and villain for the first half of the movie. She doesn't find out his real name until much later. Could Peter do that, but in reverse? Could Peter Parker convince Samantha St. Cloud that she was a good person, so that Spider-Man could offer Inferno a place by his crime fighting side?

He frowned to himself, shifting in his chair as he thought it over. It's have to be subtle, so she didn't notice or suspect. And it would be hard to not be suspicious since he'd already been at the library so many times this week. Unless he played off all but his first visit as something else? Though he had gone there with all the books to check out…

It comes to him with sudden, searing clarity, like a supernova flaring inside his brain, like a bursting firework.

He would have to ask her out on a date.

His head slams onto his keyboard with a mashing of keys. Fuck.

* * *

He doesn't mean to enlist that girl Callie and the barista Eric's help with this plan. But Ned would call this plan stupid, try and help, and then probably ruin it. MJ still was pretending that he had died and the school was being haunted by a very realistic and visible Peter Parker ghost, so she wouldn't help either, even just to tell him what he'd done wrong in their brief relationship. So rude. He couldn't ask his Aunt May to help because she wouldn't understand that it was a hypothetical question and would be such a girl about it and want to take him shopping and offer all these strange pointers that were really just outdated advice or awkward stories from her youth. Sadly, those were really the only people he _could_ ask, that he _had_ to ask, so that left a pair of strangers, one of whom he'd never actually met and was only here because Callie had latched onto him and basically forced him to come.

"Explain to me why you want our help again?"

Peter glared at Eric. Standing next to him made Peter feel like a rock. Covered in mud. At the bottom of a sewage filled pond. Eric was so good looking it was like he fell out of a fairytale book into the real world, like a tour bus full of models had broken down outside and he was just waiting here for his private jet to come pick him up. The man is six feet tall if he's an inch, all wide shoulders and narrow hips with dark hair and stormy grey eyes. His jawbone could be used as a can opener the angle is so sharp and defined. It's almost enough to make you hate him. "Explain to me why you're here again?"

Eric narrowed his eyes at Peter before dramatically tossing a lock of coal black hair out of his eyes. "Oh, I'm sorry, please do forgive me for being _forcibly dragged here_ by my coworker who didn't want to be alone with you for whatever reason." He and Peter start a staring match that only ends when a red-faced Callie coughs and clears her throat uncomfortably. Eric immediately turns to her with a brilliant smile that makes him look like the poster child for a Crest Whitening ad. "I'm so sorry, Callie, dear, I'm being hysterically rude. What did you need my help with, darling?"

She's still blushing and the ease with which Eric makes that happens irritates Peter to no end because he's never been that smooth with girls. It also makes him think that there's a good reason for Eric to be here. Callie can tell Peter all about Samantha and Eric can tell Peter how to use that information to his advantage. If it sits a little uneasily in his stomach he tells itself because he'll soon be trying to date a criminal and not because he'll be trying to use a girl's emotions against her.

"Actually I'm the one who needs help." They both turn to him and wait expectantly. He's snuck into the library in a crowd of people there on some sort of fieldtrip or something, so Samantha never notices him. Callie is where she always is, stocking books, and Peter grabs her unceremoniously by the elbow as he walks by, talking over her babble as he tries to placate her that he'll explain in a moment. Then somehow they're in the café and Callie's pleading eyes make Eric wander over from the counter to see what's going on. So now he finds himself grinning at them sheepishly and trying to look nervous and innocent of any ulterior motive. "I kind of… like Samantha?" They both blink at him like demented owls. "Like… _like her_ like her?"

Two lightbulbs suddenly click into existence over their heads and two jaws drop in surprise. "Samantha?" Eric's tone is as shocked as it can possibly be. "Samantha _St. Cloud_?" The implication is there that a kid from Brooklyn isn't good enough for one of the upper class and it makes Peter frown. "You know she has a boyfriend, right? One that she literally left the lap of luxury for? Like she used to have an actual trust fund and now all she has is him."

He had anticipated this question. "Yeah, but I hear he's kind of a jerk."

Eric leans back into his seat, more relaxed. "That's true." He's still staring at Peter as if he has two heads, slightly in awe of him, slightly as if he thinks he's gone mad. "And you propose to… what? Make her see the error of her ways with him? Be her knight in shining armor? Her hero?"

Man if only he knew. "Well… yeah, kind of, I guess." He glances back and forth between them. "But I'll need your help to do it." No harm in a little flattery. According to experts it was the most sincere form of flattery there was. "I just… need to know more about her," he beseeched Callie, brown eyes wide and endearing in a way he knew his teachers hated. In a way he knew that Tony had hated. It made people want to do whatever he asked. It really was a shame his mask covered his face. "And I'll need you," he continued, turning those doe eyes to Eric, "to show me how to… how to woo her."

Though Eric snorted at the word 'woo' he didn't comment on it, instead saying something that Peter never would have guessed. "I mean, I can certainly do my best, kid, but that's not really the team I'm pitching at." It's Peter's turn to cast a confused look. Eric sighed, as dramatic as a Shakespearean actor. "You know I'm gay, right?"

"What?" When Eric raises an eyebrow, Peter hastens to reassure him. "I mean, that's cool, I don't care, like, right? I just… you flirt with the girls in the café?" He's very confused.

Eric makes a face. "Well yeah, I'm pretty, so the chicks will tip me better if they think I'm hitting on them." He winks at Peter. "Don't give away my secret, okay, handsome?" Peter turns red to the roots of his hair as Eric laughs loudly, turning more than a few female heads. "You're adorable, kid. I think I can work with you, sure." He turns to Callie. "What say you, starshine? You wanna help a cute boy find love in a library?"

Callie, meanwhile, has been following their conversation like a tennis referee and seems startled to be addresses directly. "Um…" Eric pleads with her for a few moments, outlining all the reasons it will be better for them if Samantha finds a better boyfriend. She deflates after a moment. And though her voice is barely a whisper, it's the answer Peter wanted to hear. "Okay…"

Perfect! Time to get this masterplan started!

* * *

For the next few hours he feels like the montage in the animated Anastasia movie. He's besieged on both sides with information about the head help-desk employee. What her rich, well-to-do family is like, where she grew up and how she spent her childhood. How to always, always call her Samantha, never Sam or Sammy. How she met her current boyfriend, the one she's been booted out of the family for.

"His name is Gabriel Styx, but it's anyone's guess what his real name is, because it cannot possibly be that cool." Eric sounds so offended.

"He's in a band," Callie picks up, when it's clear that Eric is no longer going to continue. "Called Death is Divine. He's the lead singer and Samantha met him when she snuck out of her debutante ball and heard him playing in a nearby speakeasy bar. She was sixteen then, and, well… she told me it was love at first sight. Her parents tried to stop her from seeing him, saying he was a bad boy and that he was a bad influence and that no self-respecting St. Cloud would be caught dead with someone like him. But I think all that did was make her want to see him more. He was… exciting for her, I guess."

"So I need to be exciting?"

"Well, not so exciting that you cast a girl out of the will and commit assault, but you know, something a little exciting, probably, yes." Eric grins at him playfully, as Peter glares back. "So are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Exciting."

Peter snorts. _Only if you'd consider fighting aliens and working with Iron Man and saving the city and the planet exciting. So, yes_. "No, not really. Not as exciting as someone who burns their summer camp down." He smiles as Eric narrows his eyes. "I'm just your friendly, neighborhood, high school student." He grins cheekily. "So you got another plan, Casanova?"

"Yeah, find somebody else to date."

"I don't like that plan."

Eric purses his lips.

"You could just… be nice?" They both turn to Callie, who's worrying at a loose thread in her dark grey sweater she starts to slowly unravel it. She had nervous hands, he'd noticed. When their sudden silence makes her look up, she flushes and tries to explain in a stuttering flow of nervous words. "I mean… she says she love Gabriel but he's so… so _mean_." There's real anger in her voice as she says it. "But maybe if you just… showed her that boys can be nice? And… and sweet?"

"Be Prince Charming."

Her eyes light up at Eric's words. "Yeah! Like… Romeo or… or Mr. Darcy. Or Aladdin or something…"

"So..." Peter tries to wrap his head around those romantic references. "I should poison myself, almost ruin her sister's marriage, and lie to her?"

Callie blinks and Eric positively roars with laughter. When he slaps Peter on the back in comradery it's strong enough to almost knock him from his seat. "Yeah, those were all terrible examples, but we get the point, sugar."

"But no… they're all romantic… they're good guys."

"They're heroes." Peter expression and tone, he knows, are going to be something they can't place, so he makes an effort to grin and move forward. "I can do that." _I know I can do that._ "But first we have to make Samantha see she's in need of rescuing." Something flares in Callie's eyes that makes him immediately reevaluate his statement. "I mean she says she's taking a martial arts class so I'm guessing he's still abusing her and she wants to be able to handle it herself. But she shouldn't have to face that alone. Maybe she just needs some support to finally let that guy go?"

Callie slumps down in her chair. "Yeah, that makes sense, I guess."

There's a beat of silence, before Eric pipes up. "Okay, here's what I think you should do. It's pretty revolutionary, so don't go giving out all my stellar gay pickup advice to other lonely straight boys."

He magnanimously chooses to ignore the 'lonely' part of that comment. "And what is it?"

Eric beckons them both in closer with a crook of his finger, so they all slide in until they're shoulder to shoulder, heads huddled together. "Are you listening?" Peter and Callie both nod in anticipation. "Okay, here it is…" He slaps Peter upside the head so fast he doesn't even have time to react. "Just go talk to her, you idiot."

Rubbing at the back of his head, he leans back. "That's a terrible plan."

"Why? She'll never see it coming. I see all kinds of dude-bros coming into this café talking about her, but they're all too scared to actually say anything to her. It'll throw her off her rhythm."

"She's not a pedophile, Eric, Jesus. No one here needs to be on Channel 20 broadcasting the effectiveness of the J.J. Bittenbider Method." Peter sighed, mulling over the idea in his head. It seemed a lot more daunting to him to walk up to a girl and announce that he liked her (whether it was true or not, whether she was a criminal or not) than to leap headfirst into a battle with a super charged opponent. Such was life. He shifts until he's facing Callie completely. "So what would you like someone to do?" Her elbow slips off the table in surprise and she squawks out a noise that sounds like a question. "I mean, if it were you, and I was going to go up and say that I liked you… what would you want me to do?"

She's staring at him so incredulously that it makes Peter shift in his seat uncomfortably. "Me?" He nods encouragingly at her. Even Eric seems interested in his response. "I don't know… just to be… noticed, I guess." She shrugs one shoulder. The corner of her mouth lifts, stopping just short of becoming an actual smile. "That's not something Samantha ever has to worry about. Everyone notices her, don't they?"

"Uh, yeah…" She seems really sad and something makes Peter reach out and pat her hand comfortingly and it makes her eyes shoot up to his as she yanks the appendage back. Her eyes are wide, her freckles standing out in stark relief on her pale cheeks. He wants to say something reassuring and he can tell Eric does to, that of course people notice her, but then, does a lie ever help anyone when they know you're lying? Samantha is brash, loud, the center of gravity in any room she walks in. Eric was the same: a face that could turn heads with the height to make him immediately noticeable. And they both had the charm and ease with conversing with others that made them instantly charismatic to others. Even Peter, though not a social butterfly, was smart and friendly. People didn't flock to him, no, but he wasn't invisible. Callie was so shy she was almost scared of her own shadow. It was like dogs sensing if a person was good or bad. People could sense that shyness in others and turned away from it, preferring instead the easiness of conversation with someone more extroverted. Peter could see that Callie was introverted and disliked the spotlight so for her, he supposed, being noticed would be the epitome of romance.

"But for Samantha, I guess… she might like to… not be treated like a doll."

The moment has clearly passed in which the two men could have made a reassuring comment, and they both choose to concede to Callie and let it pass. "Yeah, that makes sense, since she loves the guys she's with and he treats her like shit."

"So… I should treat her like shit?"

Eric rolls his eyes. "No, you idiot. Show her she can be a strong, independent woman without you have to be an overbearing, abusive, sod. Show her a whole new world of romance."

Peter blinks. "This sounds like I'm going to be terrible at it."

"Yeah, probably."

* * *

It goes off exactly as Peter had anticipated. He is awful at it. His experience with woman is a whopping two. And of those, MJ had asked _him_ out and years before that, he'd told Gwen Stacy, at all of five years old, that he liked her. He'd shared her cookie with her and they'd sat together on the playground for one entire week where he flew high on his charm, until Billy Stevens shared a brownie with Gwen and she dropped Peter like a hot potato. So he didn't really have the greatest tract record when it came to the fairer sex.

The first time he tries to ask her out, he idiotically asks her out for coffee and, staring at him as if he's a moron, says, "You've been to the café like a thousand times, why do you suddenly need me to hold your hand to get there?"

He thinks maybe it was the way he phrased the question (_"Coffee, maybe?"_) that didn't translate well into what he really wanted to say. Instead of clarifying, he just slinks to the café, where Eric grills him for information and then laughs at him loudly. Okay, moving on to Plan B, then.

Plan B, was exactly like Plan A, except he tried to be more clear with that he wanted to say. Namely that he thought she deserved better than a man who treated her so poorly and she was strong enough to make it on her on, but that he would be there to help her if she wanted it. So eloquent, not pushy, but still a subtle nod to her alter ego and that he would be there to help Inferno, too. What he wound up saying was something completely different.

"Your boyfriend seems like an ass."

The stack of book in her hands slams onto the counter as she turns to face him completely, eyes wide and angry, her mouth a thin, narrowed line of irritation. "_What?_"

He tries to backpedal. "No, I mean, that's not what I meant to say!"

"You didn't mean to come up to me unasked for and suddenly announce, to my face, that my boyfriend is an ass?"

"Well, yeah, I did, but not like that – "

"Go away."

"But I – "

"Go _away_, Peter."

Her voice is tired and suddenly void of feeling as she turns back to her books, so he leaves. But he can't help but notice that her hands are shaking as she goes back to her work.

Plan C (_bring her flowers_) and Plan D (_leave her a note in a returned library book_) both fail abysmally. Plan D (_surprise her at her martial arts class_) doesn't even get its feet off the ground before it's crashing and burning because none of them can figure out where her class is. Eric and Callie both seem mystified by this, and Peter plays along, but he knows it's because that class doesn't exist.

Meanwhile, Inferno steals another priceless piece of art, an original sketch by Leonardo da Vinci, from the private collector who owns it.

* * *

Three weeks go by like this and Peter is beginning to think this plan was destined to fail from the start, when, like manna from heaven, one Friday after school, hanging out in Central Park with Ned, he looks up and there stands Samantha St. Cloud. He hadn't heard any sirens so he's assuming she hasn't been stealing anything. Maybe she's just casing the place for her next theft, he doesn't know. But it's a surprise to see her here and he tells her so.

"Yeah, I thought the same thing, that's why I stopped. Aren't you from Brooklyn?"

"Aren't you from the Upper East Side?"

Ned gapes at him and subtly starts to inch backwards. Samantha stares at him in shock for a moment and Peter thinks that this is where he's going to die, but then she does something unexpected. She laughs. He stares at her in amazement, because laughing completely transforms her. She looks light and breezy and happy.

"Go out with me."

Her laughter cuts off with a choked noise and she coughs out a strangled, "… _what?!_"

Too late to turn back now. Go big or go home. "Go out with me. You deserve better than that guy and I know you know that."

Her eyes dart from him to Ned, who shrugs, and back again. "… Is this what you've been trying to do for the past three weeks? Ask me out?"

"… Maybe."

"Kid, you're _really_ bad at this."

He frowns before he can help it. "Don't call me – "

"Okay."

It's his turn to turn incredulous eyes to her, wide and disbelieving. "Beg your pardon?"

She waves a dismissive hand. "You don't have to beg, I already said yes." Her smile is somewhere between a tiger and a tabby, equal parts feral and savage and safe.

"Oh – well, okay then."

"Pick me up tomorrow at the library at six! But don't call it a date!" And with a fluttering wave of her fingers, she turns and melts into the crowd. Peter and Ned stare after her in a long silent moment.

"I have a date with a master criminal," he says finally, trying to wrap his head around it.

There's another long, moment of absolute quiet.

"Dude, what are you gonna wear?"


	10. The Future is Meaningless But the Pasta

**Title:** Love & Misadventure [Chapter 9: The Future is Meaningless, But the Pasta is Now]  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 3,750  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

That is a very excellent question that warrants a lot of thought. A lot of thought ends with one, singular answer: He did not know what to wear on a date.

"_Aunt May!_"

His aunt is, after a series of jokes at his expense that make him regret ever asking her for assistance, remarkably good at helping him. She had plans to do hot yoga with her friends that afternoon, and then a book club meeting (which was basically Sangria and Shit Talk Club, but whatever), but she has everything canceled in less time than it takes him to blink. And with nothing but a clear schedule and a credit card, she hauls him out of the apartment and makes him try on a million different outfits. He feels like a montage in a chick flick where the lead is getting her makeover to impress the popular boy.

"Okay, one more – "

"Aunt May you said that five outfits ago, can't we just pick one out!" People have noticed that he's been there trying on clothes with his aunt for over an hour and he can see the definite amusement in their eyes. It's embarrassing. "Come on." He knows he's whining, but he can't help it.

"Alright, Peter." She reaches forward to pull him into an impulsive hug that makes him squawk indignantly. "I'm just _so proud_ of my big boy!"

"Aunt May!"

"Okay, okay!" She sifts through the pile of discarded clothing with nimble fingers, pulling out a pair of dark, denim slacks and a navy button-down with a tiny white polka dot pattern. "Here, these are perfect. Go get dressed and I'll pay."

While he's fighting back into his regular jeans with the holes in the knees and the _Big Bang Theory_ t-shirt emblazoned with 'Bazinga!' Peter can't help but fret about the evening tomorrow. Regardless of all the variables that don't apply to normal people when getting ready for a date. A criminal could attack the city and the innocent bystanders would be sitting ducks because their friendly neighborhood Spider-Man was on a date. His actual date could realize he was a vigilante in direct opposition to what she herself did with her after hours. If that happened, he imagined that she more than likely would lunge across the table at whatever restaurant they were at and cheerfully strangle him.

Which brought him to his second problem, the one he was stressing about the most, and the one that was probably the least of his problems. But he was a just-barely eighteen year old boy, so potential deaths and his own hypothetical murder aside, the thing Peter Parker was the most terrified about was the fact that he had never, in almost two decades of life, been on a real, honest-to-God date. So really what he was stressing about was… What should he say? How should he act? Where should he take her? How would he fucking pay? Really, Samantha could say it wasn't a date all she wanted, but he was definitely considering it a date and that was terrible and wrong of him, but whatever. He was eighteen and he wanted to go on a date. He wouldn't use the word around her. Only in his head.

He and Aunt May take a taxi back to their Brooklyn apartment and his Aunt fills the entire ride with tidbits and tips, anecdotes that Peter could have done a lifetime without hearing about.

"Aunt May!" The cab driver chuckles as Peter slouches down in his seat hoping to die of embarrassment.

She grins at him, looking twenty years younger than her age. "What, it's true! Any lady loves to be kissed with just a hint of danger." Her smile is all the cat that ate the canary and it makes him want to puke. So he slouches down as far into his seat as he go without being on the floor, pulls his hoodie over his eyes, and ignores how his aunt and the cab driver strike up a conversation about the 'good ole days.' And there he sits until they pull up outside their apartment.

* * *

He broods for the remainder of the evening and the only thing that cuts into his introspective thinking is that at six thirty the police scanner that he bought off of eBay starts blaring with incoming calls about a fire at a high rise only a dozen blocks from his home. So he suits up and climbs out the third story window and is swinging down the alley before he can dwell on anything related to his date anymore.

Unluckily (or luckily) for him, the fire gets remarkably out of control remarkably quickly and it takes him hours to help the New York City Fire Department clear the building. When everyone is finally accounted for, sooty and coughing, Peter feels dry all the way from his head to his toes. His insides feel as parched as a desert and it takes all of his willpower to muster up enough saliva to wet his whistle and thank the firefighters for their hard work protecting the citizens of the city.

"But what about you, kid? You were in there longer than any of us." The officer speaking is taking puffs of oxygen from a face mask after every few words. "You sure you're okay?"

Peter forces himself to nod slowly, any sudden movement makes him sway unsteadily on his feet. Everything between his ears feels like it's coated in a thick fog of smoke. It's making him feel fuzzy-headed and ill. "Sure thing, officer! Now if you all will excuse me, I got a hot date to get ready for!" There's a slur of catcalls and whistles as he flicks a web upwards and outwards, and with a deft twist of his wrist, he's gone.

The upside of this situation is that, by the time he's peeled off his sweating and smoky uniform, washed the flaming smell from his skin and hair, and crawled into bed, he's so exhausted that he doesn't even have time to worry about his date with Samantha. As soon as his head hits the pillow, he is immediately, and deeply, fast asleep.

* * *

The next morning dawns bright and clear and, although his throat still aches from smoke inhalation, his mask luckily had filtered out the worst of it. When he stretches his ribs pull, making him hiss in pain, but all of the muscles in his shoulders and chest stretch and release with a satisfying creak. It makes him groan as all the tension releases in one decisive pop and for a long moment he just languishes in bed, enjoying the immediate feeling of relaxing it causes. There's no thought in his mind except that it's Saturday morning and he can sleep in until there's a crime. He can lay in bed all day if he wants to until…

Until…

Until his date tonight with Inferno.

Shit.

The thought makes him bolt straight up in bed, all his muscles suddenly as tense as they were ten minutes ago. Damn, he'd almost forgotten completely about it. Was there something he was supposed to do to get ready? He still hadn't made any plans – what did people do on dates? Dinner and a movie? Was that too cliché? Would a rich girl expect somewhere fancier or would that be too much like reminding her about what she had lost? And she was a few years older than him, a thought that hadn't crossed his mind until this very second. Would she expect him to act older, more dignified and distinguished? How did someone even do that?

"Knock knock." He glances up when his aunt raps her knuckles lightly on his open door and steps in. "Good morning sleeping beauty, I brought you something for your big date tonight." He eyes her warily and his thoughts must be extremely visible on his face because she laughs gaily. "It's not more clothes, don't worry. Here."

He barely catches the small box she tosses at him. "What's this?" She merely prompts him to open it with a wave of her hands and when he does, he stares disbelieving at the few hundred dollars she's stuffed into the box. "Aunt May… what is this?" His voice is trembling.

She just shrugs and leans against the doorframe. "I know you don't have any money. No high schooler on an honor's program with no job has any money. But I don't want your first date to be a total bust, so that's a little money I've been saving up for a special occasion."

"But Aunt May…"

"No, no, no, don't give me those puppy dog eyes, just take the money, let me be a good aunt." She walks in and sits on the edge of his bed, so he sits up. "Do you have any idea what you're going to do?" At his panicked expression, she laughs again. "May I make a suggestion?"

"Please?" His voice is strangled.

"This is the girl from the Upper East Side, right?" He nods. "So nowhere too fancy, she'll be used to it, it would look like you were pandering to her, sucking up. I'd take her somewhere… typical New York."

"What?"

"Show her the city, Peter. She probably only flitted about the upper class circles in her previous life. But she her hat a good time is for the regular people in the City. Go to the Central Park Zoo and eat a pretzel. Have a slice at Roberta's. Go make up stories about people who pass you by in Times Square. Go be a New Yorker."

Peter blinks. That sounds like… that sounds like a good plan.

She pats him on the head just like she used to when he was little when she sees that he likes her idea. But then she tells him she's got plans for the rest of the day so he's on his own getting ready, but won't he please take some pictures so that she can hang them on the fridge? She's laughing when he throws the pillow at her as she flees his room.

Now there was only a few hours in between Peter and a date where he had to convince a criminal to fight for the side of good.

* * *

Noon slides by quickly. Before he knows it so have one and two o'clock. By three o'clock he's half wondering about the lack of crime in his neighborhood on a Saturday afternoon (not even someone running a red light, what gives?) and half wondering if he should start getting ready. By four o'clock he's realizing that he definitely should be getting ready and starts to scramble around, showering and then throwing clothes every which way looking for the outfit Aunt May bought him before realizing that they were folded on top of his dresser. Exactly where he'd put them yesterday so he didn't panic today.

He dressed and tries to do something with his hair, but it remains a fluffy, disheveled mass of honey-brown, that he hopes looks deliberately tussled. He doesn't think he quite managed that, but he shrugs it off because it's not like he has any time or any amount of skill to do it better. So with a shake of his shoulders to pull himself together, he hops out the window and down the fire escape, making his way to the ferry and taking a route to the library that has become second nature to him.

There's a brief moment of panic when he hits the steps of the library that Samantha won't even show. She, after all, does have a boyfriend, no matter how awful he might be. But no, there she was, looking as pretty as a picture and as far from a master thief who'd stolen billions of dollars of worth of priceless artifacts, as a an elephant is from a ballerina.

She's wearing a long, Boho-skirt with a plain, white blouse. Her hair is lose and pulled back from her face with a patterned bandana. It all makes her look very hippy and free love. She looks like she's heading to Woodstock or a Queen concert. She's smiling at him a little shyly and it makes his heart thump in his chest. If the nerves are from fear or fondness, he actually can't tell.

"Alright, kid – Peter," she corrects herself before he can. Her smile is nervous. "What's your big plan for this date?"

He can't tell if she's really nervous, or if she's faking, but he chooses to believe that it's real. So he grabs her by the hand and tugs her back down towards the cab he has loitering on a meter. His own smile is wide and brilliant. "We're going to be New Yorkers!"

* * *

It is his sincere and utter hope that, if she sees how good the people of this city are that they'll stop robbing them. He immediately realizes how stupid that thought is, because she's not robbing the regular masses that populate this city, but instead is targeting only the elite and upper class. _Most_ of the city doesn't care what she's doing, because not only does it not affect them on a personal level, but Inferno is remarkably good at minimum to no collateral damage since almost all of the time she operates under the cover of night. Her skirmish with Peter at the library was one of the few instances where she had actually caused a scene.

But if he could make her love the city the way he loved it, then maybe he could show her there were different ways to get back at the upper class for, whatever she was trying to prove to them. He didn't know what those ways might be, but he would damn sure help her figure it out.

He does exactly as Aunt May had said. He takes her to the zoo and they take photos in a photo booth making funny faces. They eat pretzels and ice cream. They each ooh and ah over their favorite animals (the panther for Inferno, the orangutan for Peter). Then they meander through the park to grab a cab to Peter's favorite pizza joint. The one with the best cheese to sauce ratio, where the dough crisps when you fold it. They get it to go and bring it up to Times Square, where they post up on some stairs and make up stories about people passing by. Peter thinks the guy on the skateboard is secretly an alien who got all his information from the 1980's. Samantha thinks that the young gaggle of girls are a secret spy organization here to rough up some Russian spy who works on Wall Street.

"So which one do you think is Inferno?"

She breaks off mid-laugh and turns to look down at him, seated just a few steps below her, in surprise. "… What?"

He gestures at the crowd. "Which one is Inferno?"

She blinks, but then, without ever taking a glance around, says, "None of them."

He smirks. "You sound pretty sure of yourself, there."

"I am." She tosses her hair back dramatically. "Inferno wouldn't ever be in a place like this, it's too crowded, too noisy, too… much."

"You talk like you know her."

Samantha leans back against the steps, no caring when it makes a disgruntled pedestrian walk over her. She merely throws a specific finger at the woman's retreating back, before turning back to Peter. "I mean, yeah. She's everything I want to be. Strong and brave and doesn't take anything from anyone."

"Well she takes some stuff."

She roars with laughter at the joke, wiping a tear away from her eye. "Well, yeah there's that. But don't you get it?" Her eyes light up in a way Peter has never seen before except in fanatics. "She's like… like Robin Hood? She steals only from the rich."

"Who said she's giving it to the poor?"

Samantha waves away his question. "I just mean… she's like… everything I could ever want to be."

_And maybe already are,_ Peter thinks looking at her faraway expression. She looks like she's talking about a deity or a god or something. Maybe it was just hero worship. But then she looks back at him and the smirk that slides across her face is…

… if she were wearing a mask, she would be a dead ringer for Inferno.

"Inferno is my hero," Samantha said bluntly. "And I adore her."

* * *

Peter follows her lead as the sky blazes purple and gold and night starts to fall on the city. The river looks strewn with diamonds from the reflection of skyscrapers glimmering on the surface of the water. He's half assuming they're heading back towards the library. But he's too lost in his thoughts to pay attention. Everything is adding up.

1\. Samantha has a vendetta against the bourgeois.

2\. Her father is the first target and victim of Inferno's theft.

3\. Same general build and coloring.

4\. Sighted and fought by himself at the Hamilton Fish Park Library

5\. Injury after previous battle noted.

6\. Same injury on right forearm.

7\. Propensity to call him 'kid.'

He hesitates to include her hero worship of Inferno onto the list, but it fits, too. Doesn't Peter himself defend his alter ego's antics to people who think he's a menace, a nuisance, an insult to the police? Doesn't he feel a strong connection to the vigilante that is himself? There's really no other option that he can fathom where someone else fits this mold so well. She even has access to someone who has a fetish for pyro techniques.

"Well this is my stop," Samantha whispers as the cab rolls to a stop.

His head jerks up with a stop and he suddenly realizes that they're not in front of the library, but are on the steps of an apartment building. He slides out of the cab beside her, paying the driver, paying the driver without really paying attention, and continuing to look up at the building. It's very grey, with wide, concrete steps and bars on the windows. A long cry from the houses in the Upper East Side with their columned porches and white-washed fences and solar panels.

"It's not much but… but I pay for it myself." Her voice is defiant, daring him to say something negative about the state of it.

But he would never do something like that. His answer is easy and honest. "That's cool. I still live with my aunt."

She smiles, hesitantly. "That must be fun." With a click of a key, the outer door is open and they walk into the hallway, but not very far, as she stops outside the first door on the left.

"Maybe if you're a girl," he shrugs. "All she wants to do is go shopping and try on clothes and try out new ways to make kale edible. Spoiler alert," he continues as he starts to walk her up the stairs, "there aren't any." She laughs. "That's nice." She blinks at him. "When you laugh, it makes you light up." Her eyes are suddenly downcast and he reaches out to lightly grasp her wrist. "Hey, I know we just met not too long ago and all, but… but if you ever need anything I'm always willing to help…"

"Like with what, Peter? Help me get back into my parent's good graces or get an invite to the MET or move somewhere better?"

"Well… anything." He makes his eyes wide and earnest, trying to show her what he feels to be true about everyone to the bottom of his heart. "You're a good person. You are!" Peter exclaims when she snorts derisively. "Everyone has the potential to be good, to do good things. Sometimes they just need a little help."

Her smile is sad and wise beyond her years as she stares at him. "You're something else, kid, you know that?"

"Don't – " He hears a sudden thump from inside the apartment that stops him short. "Uh… is your boyfriend home, by any chance?"

"Oh no, Gabriel had a gig tonight, somewhere down in China Town or something like that, I don't remember. He and the boys always go out drinking afterwards. They're never back before dawn."

"That's good – "

But his reply is short lived, because the door next to him is suddenly yanked open with enough force that it slams into the wall with the sound of a cannon. The man that's standing there is tall, dark, handsome… and crazed. His black hair is shot through with electric blue streaks that match the unreal blue color of his eyes. The tattoos on his arms are so think and dark that he looks like he's wearing a long sleeved shirt. His grin is positively maniacal.

"G-Gabriel! You're home!"

"That I am, _sweetheart_, and I found our bed cold and empty, but now I see why." He turns to Peter with the slow and predatory gaze of a bird of prey. "You were out babysitting some little pipsqueak.

_Oh man, this day was going so well, too…_

"No, Gabriel, it's not what you think –" Her voice is trembling.

Without conscious thought, Peter has moved to place himself in front of her, in between Samantha and her boyfriend. "Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to be a little nicer to my friend."

"Aw, look how sweet, you've got a little baby to stand up for you nowadays, Sammy." He turns those wide, drugged-out eyes turn back to Peter and he's got one second to realize that all hell is about to break lose when Gabriel's grin widens and he practically purrs, "I'm gonna kill you," and comes forward with his fists swinging.


	11. I Am Straight Up Not Having a Good Time

**Title:** Love & Misadventure [Chapter 10: I Am Straight Up, Not Having a Good Time]  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,382  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

There's always a dilemma when Peter has to fight as _Peter_ that presents a huge problem. Though he has the necessary skills (and technology) to defeat any normal person in a regular hand-to-hand fight, there's a certain level of plausibility that needs to be achieved. He's a regular sized senior in high school. He's not short, but he's not tall. He's in shape, but not build like a football player. He's no Thor or Captain America. He's just your average looking kid. So if he lays out a guy who's got a foot in height and at least fifty pounds of pure muscle on him in less than ten seconds flat, people start to wonder. And people who wonder start to question. And people who question tend to draw conclusions.

He doesn't need people drawing conclusions about him, so when Gabriel swings, Peter, instincts screaming at him to duck, stands still and lets that first punch shock him dead across the jaw. It hurts like a son of a bitch and sends him crashing to the ground, while Samantha screams and Gabriel laughs. Before he can pull himself back up, there's a boot in his side and the agony of his already fragile ribs being kicked caused him to curl into a ball. He can feel his rib cracking a little more with every kick –

Until there's a commotion above him – it sounds like Samantha is sobbing and trying to explain, trying to pull Gabriel away. Peter uses the moment to lurch onto his hands and knees. When he spits, it's nothing but blood. There's a slap, and the sound of a body crumbling to the floor. It's a sound that makes his eyes shoot open and when he hears the whizzing air that signals another kick flying towards his midsection, one of his hands shoots up and grabs it by the ankle.

"What the f-" Peter yanks and Gabriel goes careening over his shoulder in a flail of arms and legs, crashing into the metal wall of mailboxes. He groans.

Peter crawls over to Samantha to check her pulse; it's thready and fast, but there, and her eyes are starting to flutter open. They're glazed with pain and he can already see the darkening bloom of a bruise starting to form across her cheek. The sight makes him irrevocably angry. "Wait here, for a moment."

"But, Peter – "

"Wait here."

When he stands, the righteous anger surging through him makes him forget about the pain in his jaw, the agony of his ribs. All he can feel is the red-hot thrum of fury clouding his vision. "I don't ever want to see you come near Samantha again." He doesn't make a motion to attack Gabriel again, instead choosing to remain in his protective stance over Samantha. His voice doesn't waver.

"What?" Gabriel is pulling himself into a seated position and glaring at him through the blood dripping down his temple. "You can't tell me that! She's _mine_."

"Samantha St. Cloud doesn't belong to you or to anyone else. She's leaving and if you come after her or ever try and see her again, I'll kick your ass." As Gabriel blusters and tries to haul himself to his feet, Peter turns and pulls Samantha up gently by the elbow.

He kindly leads her from the hall, while Gabriel rants and raves behind them. "I'll find you, Sammy! You got nowhere to go! I'll find you, you bitch!"

"Come on, let's get you somewhere safe."

* * *

'Safe' turns out to be Callie's house, which is only a few blocks away. Her townhouse is the same shade of grey and concrete that Samantha's apartment house is, but minus the bars on the windows, which gives it a much friendlier vibe. She greets them at the sound of the doorbells wearing a silk set of pink pajamas that look like something his aunt would wear. There's even a pink sleep mask pushes up off of her face.

"Can I help you?" But then her blearily eyes notice the bruise on Samantha's cheek and the blood drying on the corner of Peter. "Oh my God, what happened?!"

Callie ushers the two of them inside as they explain what happened. Her brows perk at the mention of their 'it wasn't a date,' but she says nothing, merely listens as Samantha tells her about the fight with her boyfriend.

"Ex-boyfriend, I guess now," she says, slumping into the couch a little while Callie hands her an ice pack for her face. "Peter was very brave, though." She flashes him a little smile, before chuckling. "It's a shame he doesn't have anything worth stealing. If he did I could drop Inferno an anonymous tip."

"Well that may be, but at least he's gone now. You can stay here until you have somewhere else to stay. There's a spare bedroom under the stairs. It's small, but there are no abusive boyfriends in it."

Samantha's smile is wry. "Sounds like heaven."

With that seemingly settled, Peter stands. "Alright, I'll come check on you tomorrow and see how – "

"Wait! You're not leaving, are you?!" Samantha seems terrified at the thought, her eyes wide and her face pale. She reaches out the grab his arm in a white-knuckled grip. "Look, I don't mean to point fingers, but you told Gabriel I was leaving and pissed him off."

"_Excuse me_?"

"He said he'd find me. What if he comes looking for me tomorrow before you get here? Or even tonight? I don't have a lot of friends, kid."

"Gee, I wonder why." He can't hold in the sarcasm, since the woman is blaming him for helping. Can't he ever catch a break? Okay, maybe it _was_ his fault that he chose to go on a date (or whatever she wanted to call it, but let's call a fish a fish) with a woman who already had a boyfriend who was known to be abusive and possessive. Let that be a lesson to him in the future. Though he wasn't looking to repeat this exact situation anytime soon.

She frowns. "He might guess to look up Callie and see where she lives."

Though he glances at her face, Callie seems remarkably unperturbed by this. "So what are you saying right now? You want me to take you back to him?"

"No, you idiot! I'm asking you to stay here, in case he comes looking for me!"

Taken completely aback by the request, and from Samantha no less, he turns to Callie for potential advice, but she appears equally as shocked. When their eyes meet in a glance of mutual confusion, he raises a brow in question, and, after a moment's hesitation, she responds with a shrug and a muttered, "The couch is pretty comfortable, I guess." She sounds remarkably unhappy about the situation, but resigned to see it through the end.

Still reeling with this abrupt change of plans, Peter can do nothing as Samantha nods decisively. "That settles that then."

He'd have to call Aunt May and let her know some of what was going on so she didn't have the police out searching for him, if she didn't already. And he might have to gloss over the fact that it was two girls he'd be staying with. Or maybe he'd say Eric was there, too? That would be better, right? He was pretty confident she would be cool with it, as long as maybe he didn't say he wasn't in Brooklyn anymore and he still managed to make it to school on Monday, which promised to be a bitch in and of itself.

"I mean… okay, I guess."


	12. Oh My God, They Were Roommates

**Title:** Love & Misadventure [Chapter 11: Oh My God, They Were Roommates]  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 3,385  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

It turns out to be a strange Sunday, stranger than he could have imagined it being when is weekend started. He goes home for all of twenty minutes to grab a duffle bag and shove it full of boxers and t-shirts and a toothbrush, and to grab his backpack for school. On his way out, he almost crashes into his aunt on her way in.

"Peter! Sick of your new roommates already?"

"No, I was just grabbing some – hey, are you just now getting home?" He interrupts himself to ask, taking in his aunt's appearance. She's wearing a little black dress and a red trench coat, with a set of black heels. It's eleven o'clock in the morning on a Sunday, Peter knows there's no way in hell she was out to church in an outfit like that. That was a Saturday night outfit.

She gives him a sardonic eye as she breezes inside, kicking off her shoes as you go. "You sound just like my mother," she says flippantly. "And what about you?" She says turning on her nephew with her hands on her hips.

"Me?" He doesn't have to fake the confusion in his voice.

"One date and a girl asks you to move in with her? Talk about a Casanova. Take after your father, you do." She winks.

"Aunt May it's not like that, Samantha, her… uh, ex-boyfriend," he says after a brief hesitation, not at all sure how his aunt will react if she knows he went on a date with a technically unavailable woman, "is kind of… kind of a jerk. And she was worried that he might be mad that she was… dating again."

His aunt is frowning. "He sounds like a possessive bastard." She fiddles for a moment at the counter, making a cup of cappuccino in the Keurig. He can tell she has more to say, so he waits patiently for her to finish her thought. When she's filled her cup with more cream than coffee and taken a healthy sip, she turns back to him. "Are you sure you'll be okay?" The tone is light, but her eyes are worried.

Peter holds back a laugh. If only his aunt knew the crumbled, seething mess he'd left Gabriel the last time they'd met. She would probably scold him for fighting, but there would be a part of her that would be proud of him, he was sure. The feminist part. Or just the part that hated chauvinistic men who lived in the past. It would also probably make her more likely to think that he was out looking for revenge against, not just Samantha, but Peter, too, so he decided not to mention it. "Yeah, I'm sure I'll be okay. I going to try and convince her to get a restraining order, so at least if he shows up anywhere, all she has to do is call the cops."

"That's a good idea. She's lucky to have someone like you, Peter."

He shifts uncomfortably at the compliment, he was never really good at hearing them, and especially about things he thought didn't deserve praise. Like being a good person. "Thanks."

"Well, you crazy kids be good," she says, before draining her coffee cup and slamming it on the counter as loudly as a downed shot glass. "I'm off to bed!" Before he can even start to try and ask again where she was all night, she's vanished down the hallway and the door has clicked closed behind her.

"Well, alrighty then," he says with a sigh, hoisting his book bag higher on his shoulder and picking up his duffel. He's heading out the door when his phone goes off.

_So u alive or dead?_

It's Ned and Peter realizes with a start that he hasn't spoken to his friend since Friday afternoon.

_Still breathin_

_ So how's the big date with the sexy Inferno go?_

_ No kiss, I beat up her boyfriend, then moved in with her and Callie. So typical Peter Parker._

_ WTF?!_

_ I'll explain 2morrow_

_ Alright cya later_

_ Peace out_

He's wondering how this is all going to work out, since there's a big plot hole in his great big idea that living with Samantha will let him catch her in the act, so to speak, of being Inferno. And that is, the plan could backfire and she could catch him a Spider-Man lie. Lord knows, he was out and injured far more often than Inferno was. There were way more dots to connect on his end, in his opinion, and if you were smart they were easier to find. He had school all day, his crime fighting took place in very specific hours and, usually, neighborhoods. He was the only kid in Brooklyn who wore jackets in the summer to cover the plethora of bruises and cuts he accumulated swinging around the city and fighting evildoers. A lot of his opponents were defeated with tech and he was an honors student who had interred for both Oscorp and Stark Industries. They were very large dots. Huge. Massive. How more people didn't see them was something he thanked his lucky stars about every day.

But he usually wasn't living with someone who might want to kill him if she found out who he really was. Or because he accidently left his suit or web-slinger out where she could see them.

This should be really interesting.

* * *

It's actually not as interesting as he would have thought.

To be honest, living with two girls is a strange and terrifying adventure for the first week. It's not something he would wish on his worst enemy, to be honest. There's hair… everywhere. If he could just yank a piece of Inferno's hair off her head the next time the toed off, he could easily match it to one of the several thousand hairs he found in literally everything to it if he just found a lab that would work pro bono for him.

But the chances of him finding someone in a forensics lab in New York City willing to do work for free for a high school student, no questions asked, was about as likely as him finding a million dollars the next time he and Ned went treasure hunting with Ned's old metal detector. So he had to resort to more sleuthing methods of finding clues. Like looking through Samantha's room when no one was home. Classy.

All he found was a lot of black clothing in the laundry room which wasn't really a red flag, but it wasn't really nothing either.

So then he resorted to following her when he was out on patrol. But he couldn't always be where Samantha was, there was actual crime taking place, robberies and heists and kidnappings, and a giant lizard man in the sewers. He had things to do, he couldn't always be lurking in the lobby of the library pretending to study or following Samantha around as she went to the grocery store. Or wherever it was she went at night after work, since that was prime time for crime and he was always, always busy then.

So not once, but twice, while Peter was off gallivanting and waltzes with ne'er-do-wells, Inferno smashes and grabs two upper class residents, making off with an almost priceless Ming vase and then, the next evening, a diamond pendant values at a few million dollars. Then, to put the cherry on top, while he's at school nine days after moving in, Inferno strikes ago, stealing, of all things, a mint condition, special edition Lamborghini. It was all very _Gone in 60 Seconds_, to be honest, but it still irritated both Peter and the NYPD to no end. I mean, where was she stashing everything? And how?

So since the clue finding and the stalking wasn't really working, he resorted to keeping his eyes and ears open for news about any injuries that Inferno might have gotten on any off her outings. For heists one and two, he hears nothing, not a thing. The police didn't even know anything had happened until the owners reported the objects missing the next day, along with turning over Inferno's calling card: a box of matches. There wasn't so much as an unlatched window to show that Inferno had been inside either of those buildings at all. No fingerprints or shoe prints, nothing but a line of white dust to show where something had once sat.

But then, a miracle. Peter overhears two officers the next day speaking of it as he helps them reinforce a bridge that is on the verge of collapsing. During her robbery of the Lamborghini, an alarm is triggered when an exterior window on the garage is shattered. That means the cops are on location two minutes later, just as Inferno peels out of the driveway and onto the highway. It seems like they're going to overtake her, but as she reaches the end of the drive, she sticks one elegant hand out the window and lobs a flash grenade back at the officers. As their cars skid to screeching halts, all they hear over the clamor is Inferno's arm slamming harshly into the mailbox when she's too slow to tuck it back into the safety of the car. The force of the blow knocks dents the metal of the mailbox.

It's only a brief annotation in the police report he has managed to get a copy of. Not by hacking into their system, even though he's fairly certain he could get it that way, too. No, Peter uses the tired-old method of sweet talking the officer at the booking desk. She's young and pretty and wants to help catch criminals, so when a masked superhero falls from the ceiling onto her desk late one night, she screams, draws her weapon, and then asks how she can help him. It's all very simple, he tells her. He just wants to see the police reports of the last three robberies committed by Inferno. Super easy, no need to tell anyone. Just open a file and let him read it, she didn't even need to download it. She could just pretend he had accidentally read it over her shoulder if she wanted to. It would help him out so much, just to see the report.

She wanted to help so badly, that she did. And all she asked for in return was a selfie, so now he's her most like photo on Instagram. Good for her.

The first two reports for from a week ago. Peter only wanted to see them because Samantha hadn't been injured lately and if Inferno had been, then that was her alibi. They clearly weren't getting into the same kind of mischief. He was really intrigued with the report from last night's car theft. It was both insanely interesting (I mean, she stole _a car_) and she was injured, which was so uncommon is peeked his immediate interest. The report is short and concise, to the point of being blunt. Alarm is sounded at 2:32 AM at residence, cops arrive on scene two minutes later, finding broken glass. Immediate car chase takes place culminating with a flash grenade and a dented mailbox. _Be on the lookout for a young woman, possible cuts from glass shards and potential injury to let arm. _Now all he had to do was track down Samantha sometime today and see if she was in any way sporting a brand new injury that might match slamming her arm into a metal mailbox at high speed.

Peter was almost giddy with anticipation and nerves as he loitered around the apartment that night and morning, waiting for Samantha to meander out of her room. He waited for hours, for so long he contemplated knocking on her closed door or accidentally on purpose stumbling into her room to see if she was even here. When a loud crash echoed from upstairs at around nine, he almost had a heart attack. But when he bolted upstairs to see what the commotion was Callie, just exiting her room, jumped in surprise.

"Peter!" She held a hand lightly to her chest, to calm her rapidly beating heart. "You startled me! I didn't think anyone was up right now!"

He'd almost forgotten Callie lived her, even though it was her house. She was so elusive and quiet. She worked the closing shift at the library, stocking and cleaning, so she arrived home later than he and Samantha did, and slept later into the morning. He had asked Samantha once what Callie did all day before work. She wasn't in school, she he was curious where she was most of the afternoon. Apparently she spent it at a local mechanics shop, volunteering her time and researching for her college applications. Something to do with car engines or tires or something. Samantha didn't know. Peter got the distinct impression that she didn't really care about it; that she didn't really care about anything that didn't have to do with her own life plan, which she would tell anyone who stood still long enough. She wanted to create a blended martial arts and yoga, exercise routine, citing that the combination of the two, paired with meditation, was more beneficial to a person's health than simply one of those options. She was planning to write her thesis on it. Peter had his doubts, but he was superpowered, so he was definitely not her target demographic.

"My bad, Callie, I forgot you were home. Uh… have you see Samantha lately?"

Callie inched closer to the bathroom down the narrow hallway, so he leaned aside and gave her room. She had dark circled under her bleary eyes and her hair was sticking up in every direction, covering most of her face, like she'd just rolled out of bed. She also looked like she had fallen asleep in my uniform again, wearing black slacks and a matching turtleneck. It made her look small and vulnerable, made the freckles stand out on her face in stark relief. She looked exhausted. "I saw her yesterday when my shift started, but she was leaving when I got there. Why?"

He shrugged. "No reason." The grand theft auto took place at approximately two o'clock in the morning, so her work schedule wasn't really the point. All the robberies took place well after somewhere like a public library would remain open. "I just was looking for her to ask her something."

"Well, I haven't – " As she's turning to fully enter the bathroom, the front door swings loudly open and bangs shut with a slam that rattles the pictures on the walls.

"Honey, I'm home!" Samantha's singsong voice echoes through the townhouse. After the mumble their hellos and replies they hear her start trudging upstairs as she continues her conversation. "I had _the worst_ night ever, ya'll. Like, literally the worst. I went to that twenty-four hour internet café to work on some shit, but I realized I needed Renji's help." Renji was her supposed martial arts instruction, but Peter had never met or seen him. "So I head downtown to his place." The top of her head was almost visible to them now, as she marched up the last few steps. "And I got fucking _mugged_."

Peter and Callie gasp in unison when she's finally standing at the top of the stairs. Callie immediately starts asking her all sorts of question, about where this happened and if she called the police or went to the hospital and about what they took from her. Peter is only half listening. Because aside from the bumps and scraps she's accumulated from apparently fending off her attackers, the bruise on her chin, the tear on the knees of her jeans, the dirt on her palms – though nothing that looked like it would come from busting a glass window open. He focused on one primary thing.

"Your arm…" His voice is strangled and when they turn to him with twin expressions of surprise. "What… happened to your arm?"

Both girls blink at him. "Dude were you not listening? I was mugged." She shrugs her shoulder, but flinches immediately, since her left arm is currently hoisted up in a makeshift sling. "Renji said it's just sprained. One of those assholes pushed me and I must had hurt it when I tried to catch myself." She frowns at him. "Why?"

"Uh… no reason… sorry, yeah, I was listening, I was just wondering what happened to it… exactly…"

Callie rubs her own arm in empathy. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Samantha grins. "I'll be right as rain in a few days, I'm a fast healer, remember?" She slaps Callie on the shoulder with her good arm and even without the echoing should Peter knows it hurts because she flinches away. "Oh, my bad girl. I'm getting stronger and more bad-assed every day!" She smiles so wide, her eyes crinkle with it, and it takes Peter a long moment to remember that this woman is a wanted criminal. "Anyway, you crazy kids, I'm off to bed. Don't do anything I wouldn't do." Peter snorts. "Or do, whatever." And then she's hobbling down the hall to the guest room and swinging the door closed loudly behind her.

The two remaining stare after her for a long, silent moment, Peter with resolution and Callie with a quiet sort of fondness. "I hope she'll be okay."

Turning at the quiet declaration, he notices that Callie is still rubbing at her shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah, it was just a long close and then I was staring at a computer screen working on my research for a few hours when I came home, I must had strained my neck. I surprised I didn't wake you."

Well he couldn't tell her that he hadn't been home all night and instead had been out fighting crime and stalking their housemate. "Nope, I didn't hear a thing, I must have slept through anything."

She's staring at him with her head cocked to the side, as curious as a bird, her hazel eyes bright and intelligent. Like a golden retriever puppy. "That's good. I'll probably be up late again tonight, just a warning."

He would be out in the streets, stopping muggings and minor traffic violations until something bigger came along. He'd also be contemplating how on earth to get a tracker on something Samantha carried with her everywhere so he could follow her movements more closely. "That's cool, I'll just chill on the couch like yesterday. I sleep like the dead." He laughed.

"Well, okay then." She's staring at him as if she's trying to discover his secrets and it makes him shift, but Callie is just like that. Quiet and introspective and introverted and shy..

"Hey!" Samantha's yell startled them both. "Can you all keep it down, people are trying to sleep here!"

With an eye roll, Callie finally entered the bathroom, and gently tapped the door closed behind her. The immediate sound of rushing water reached his ears and Peter sighed. Maybe he should text Shuri and see if Wakana had any tech that could help him that would also make it through Customs without starting a federal hullabaloo. Or maybe Dr. Strange could track her with magic or something. Maybe his powers would useless in the face of discovering actual information about a criminal and he should just stop sleeping and going to school and creep around the city like a leotarded Batman until he could catch Inferno in the act and corner her.

Yeah, and maybe pigs would fly.


	13. Thank You For Coming to my Ted Talk

**Title:** Love & Misadventure [Chapter 12: Thank You for Coming to my Ted Talk]  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,094  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

This was in no way going according to her plan. Sure, some aspects of her plan were going absolutely swimmingly. She had gotten the job at the library, even with having to credentials due to the fact that one of their current employees had _accidentally_ fallen down the front steps and broken a leg. It was all very accidental, of course, since he didn't see her there with her outstretched leg, where she had been. Accidentally. So step one was complete. Work at the library and slyly research all of New York City's finest and most expensive treasures. There was more information than she could handle. She could pick and choose which bastards she wanted to steal from. And the more she stole, the more money Anita made selling those items on the Black Market. And the more money the Red Queen made, the more money Inferno made off of those commissions. Not much when you considered some of those items were selling in the upwards of billions of dollars. But Anita provided her tech, too. And it was more money than she made at the library.

She could research to her heart's content, getting all of her papers in order, backed by fact and science and edition after edition of textbooks.

But now, somehow, through a series of unforeseen and unimaginable circumstances, she found herself living under the same room as Peter fucking Parker, a boy whose mentality could best be described as 'bunny rabbit,' he was so wholesome and bouncing and cute. It was equal parts nauseating and adorable.

But now her nightly excursions and reconnaissance outings had to be shortened and, in some cases, canceled altogether, which lead to expeditions like her car thievery, a situation where she was just winging it. As noted by the fact that, not only did she trigger an alarm and alert the police two minutes into her heist, but she injured herself trying to avoid an arrest.

She rubbed at her injured arm absentmindedly.

And Peter was weirdly curious about her arm, now that she thought about it. Was it possible that he suspected? Not necessarily that she was Inferno, but that there was something she was hiding. Men were curious by nature and she had fold that, unlike woman, when they couldn't get their way, even in regards to finding out information, it made them angry and volatile. Peter might look about as malicious as a bunny, but there was no telling what he might become if he kept digging into her life. Either he never found out about her double life and continued to merely question. In that situation he would eventually confront her, coming up with all sorts of wild and crazy accusations, pointing the finger at everything, every which way, instead of pointing it at his own inability to learn the truth.

Contrariwise, if he _did_ discover her night job as a master thief, her duel life as library employee by day, criminal by night. And then he would turn her in. But not without first discovering if there was a reward for her arrest, she was sure.

Or maybe he would attempt a citizen's arrest her himself. How like a man that would be, to assume he could take her down, that he could overpower her with muscles the way other men tried to, or outmaneuver her with his masculine capacity for reasoning. In his dreams, maybe. No mere boy was going to get the best of her, no matter how smart he seemed to be. No matter how curious and inquisitive. No matter how good he was at putting two and two together or seeing things that she was trying to hide.

He was never, _never_ going to get the better of her. She had spent her entire life, and especially the last year, not taking any shit from the men above her. Men who thought that they could tell her what to do, men who thought they were better than her, smarter than her, more worthwhile than her. Men who thought they were superior to her just because they were men. No mere boy was going to treat her that way either.

It provoked an almost irresistible urge to ask him what he knew, to pry, to do some sleuthing of her own. But… no… that was a terrible idea, so she shook her head to clear the thoughts from her mind. That was a surefire way to get herself killed. Or worse… arrested. Arrested and she ruined any chance she had of ever completing her research and proving that she was right. Dead… well, dead she didn't have problems at all anymore. So if it came down to it, if worse came to worse, even though she didn't really want to die… if that situation arose, she knew which way she would want the outcome to swing. It wasn't pretty, but such was life.

And now, with this boy, this curious, nosy, _interesting_ little boy sleeping on a couch only a staircase away from her, through no one's fault but her own really, her life was so much more complicated than it had to be. She would have to be extra careful, to not be injuries and to hide her injuries. She would have to cover her tracks, make sure her alibis were all bulletproof and watertight. There would have to be no reason for Peter 'Pretty Boy' Parker to question her whereabouts or her history and past or her plans for the future. There would be no reason for him to stay in this house, once the pesky of issue of one Gabriel Styx, that handsome sleaze, was dealt with, hopefully sooner rather than later. She would be squeaky clean, a golden child, a perfectly behaved girl just like what men wanted to see.

Then, before he and the rest of New York City knew what hit them, Inferno would strike again.


	14. What Do We Say When We Feel Like This?

**Title:** Love & Misadventure [Chapter 13: And What Do We Say When We Fee Like This?]  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 2,496  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

Peter is on almost constant patrol for the next three days, excluding the hours he's legally obligated to spend in the throes of the American education system. He spends those hours a restless ball of energy, tapping his pencil on his desk, jiggling is leg beneath the table. In general just being a major disruption to his teachers and his classmates at every waking second. But could they blame him, really? If they knew what was going through his head while his teachers droned on and on about cosigns and tangents, about the War of the Roses and cellular structure, Inferno was out there planning her next heist. _Samantha_ was out there researching who to rob and what to steal. All the while Peter was stuck in class instead of being out there trying to track down her whereabouts when she wasn't at work or at Callie's apartment. He had no idea how she was storing and moving all of these stolen goods. And it was positively eating at him. Driving him crazy with his inability to solve the case. He wasn't Sherlock Holmes, but he wasn't an idiot. He should be able to solve this.

Every day when school lets out, he's off like a shot, heading back the Lower East Side like a bullet. A large part of him feels awful about how little vigilante hero-ing he's done in Brooklyn since all of this started. But there's been no major outbreak of new villainous faces since he trapped Sandman and he's fairly sure the police can handle the day to day crime that floods the city constantly. They were doing it before superheroes were a daily sight on the skyline, after all, so they can do it now while he deals with something larger than muggings and stolen bikes. So off he flitted, hurling pell-mell across a river and around a city until he located Samantha and then, crime permitting, watched her for signs of something fishy.

Three days of almost no sleep and constant motion is making him see double from lack of rest. The third time he almost slips off a building because he's nodding off without realizing it, he realizes that, like it or not, he's going to have to get some shuteye. Even though he knows the second he's deeply asleep, they'll probably be an outpouring of crime. But his body is going to sleep whether he wants it to or not, so unless he wants to slip deep into REM sleep in the middle of swinging over traffic, back to Callie's apartment it is.

So when he gets out of school Friday, instead of heading out to the city, he trudges immediately back to Callie's place, drops his bag onto the floor with a thug, face plants on the couch, and as soon as he closes his eyes, between one breath and the next, he is vastly, and deeply, asleep.

* * *

He wakes to the sound of typing, the gentle and repetitive clicking penetrating his dream so softly that at first he doesn't notice. Then he's blinking in the half light and realizing it is much, much later than he thought he's sleep until. When he turns his face out of the expanding puddle of drool he'd created, his neck cracks and he groans.

The typing breaks off suddenly.

"You're awake."

He recognizes that voice. "Callie?" It takes him a few long moments of blinking to bring the room into focus. When the room is clear to him, he sees Callie siting on the floor, papers strewn around her, a laptop in front of where she's sitting cross-legged next to a half-eaten box of Oreos and a steaming cup of what smells like hot chocolate. "What are you doing?"

She shrugged. "Samantha was watching some weird avant garde movie at an ungodly volume so I came down here to work. I hope I didn't wake you."

"I think it was time for me to wake up," he said, as he forced himself into a seated position and stared down at her. "What time is it?"

"Half past seven."

"Okay, cool." He felt remarkably good for having slept only three hours.

"In the morning."

He shoots off the couch. "_In the morning_?!" He'd been asleep for almost thirteen hours, no wonder why he felt so bloody fantastic. Sure his body needed it, apparently, but the city also needed him to solve this Inferno business before it got any worse. He didn't have time for this, didn't have time to slip into a relative coma for half a day and drool the night away.

"You snore, by the way."

He was affronted. "I most certainly do not!"

When she giggled it was surprisingly cute and girlish for someone so introverted. "You do, and you drool."

He swiped at his jaw. "Yeah that one I believe." He settled into the couch more comfortably, without realizing it mirroring her crossed leg position. He watches her for a moment, contemplating if it's worth it suiting up and going on patrol. He could still hear a shower running upstairs, so he knew Samantha was home, though how recently she had come how he could only guess. And he didn't hear any police sirens, nor was his Spidey-Sense tingling. So it was fairly safe to assume that nothing major was happening in the vicinity. He could just take a lazy Saturday morning, wouldn't that be a wonder. But the way Callie is shuffling between books and folders of papers and notecards and then peering narrow-eyed at her laptop screen as she typed furiously was making him curious. "What are you doing?"

She glances up, startled. "Oh, um, research for my college application papers. I work on it whenever I have time, trying to get it perfect before I apply again."

"Where do you want to go?" He asked, in interest.

She shrugged. "Anywhere, really. Anywhere that will let me continue my research towards a Master's. But…" Her voice grew softer. "MIT is my dream school." She laughed, but it was self-deprecating and sad. "But I could never afford it so… anywhere that will take me."

There's not really much he can say to that, not that won't come out sounding like he's pitying her. "MIT would be amazing, I was hoping to get a scholarship there after I did the Stark Internship – "

She turns to face him fully so quickly her papers ruffle in the wind of her motion. "You were a Stark Intern?" Her eyes were wide and wild. "Did you ever meet Tony Stark?" When he nods, swallowing the lump in his throat, she throws more questions at him rapidly. "Did you ever see his lab? Who's running his company now? Are they still doing the internship? How do I apply – or is it just for High School students? What was he like?"

The barrage of questions momentarily makes his grief take a backseat to trying to process them. "Uh… yeah, his lab is pretty awesome, but I wasn't allowed to touch anything. I think Happy decides about the interns now, but I honestly think he just picks people he likes, I don't know. It definitely all has to go by Mrs. Potts. She runs the company, she did even… even before." He swallowed thickly again. "And um, he was… he was awesome."

There must be something in his voice, the words heavy with emotion, because Callie immediately leans back. "Oh, you… you _really_ knew him, didn't you? I'm so sorry, I didn't know."

He waves away her apology. "It's okay, I mean… he was a hero, you know?"

"Yeah…" She plays with a loose carpet thread for a moment. "Tony Stark is the reason I want to go to MIT. He's my idol."

Peter smiled. "Yeah, me, too." He takes a deep breath, to calm himself. "So… what are you working on then? Something like Mr. Stark's Iron Man Suit?"

She laughed lowly. "Oh, no, nothing like that." She shifted around so she could slide a sheaf of papers together. Her hands tremble for a moment, before she passes them to him, waiting until he's grabbed them and settled back on the couch before continuing. The entire time she speaks, she's staring down at the thread she's worrying, brunette hair falling beside her face and obscuring her expression. "It's research on utilizing nanotechnology to create smart cars that run themselves and emit no pollution."

Peter's eyes widen more and more as he continues to read. "Callie… this is… this is awesome! Mr. Stark would have _loved_ this!"

"Really?"

"Oh, yeah! But… you said the colleges you applied to denied you? Why?" He shakes the papers a little for emphasis. "This is revolutionary."

She shrugged. "I don't think they liked that I was in it to better the world. That I trademarked it and they would never be able to use it to make millions and millions of dollars. Plus I think it annoyed them that they didn't understand me when I talked about cars. It hurt their… what Samantha calls 'masculine pride' or something like that."

"Samantha?"

"Yeah, that's kind of how we met."

"I thought you met at the library."

"Well, yeah, the first time she came in she wasn't applying. She was causing a scene in the bathroom – " When she sees his flabbergasted expression, she says, "Crying, she'd just been kicked out by her dad. Anyway, so I was the only girl scheduled that day and they asked me to check on her. We got to talking and it turned out we had a lot in common. So I can't get into college because no one will accept my course of research, right? Samantha is in college, but her professors won't accept her thesis research as valid, even though all her studies are sound and her sources are solid. She's even tried to find private organizations to back her and just skip graduating all together, but everyone thinks she's crazy."

Peter blinked. Okay, these girls had _a lot_ in common. "Are you from the Upper East Side, too?"

She scoffed. "Oh no, my family is from upstate in Suffern. Well, my dad is from LA, that's where he had his big garage and did upgrades for celebrities and rich people. When he and my mom had kids they moved somewhere quieter. But mom wanted somewhere with snow, so… New York. His garage isn't as busy as it was in LA. I wish I could have worked there."

"Did you work for him here?"

"A little, yeah. But I have four older brothers." She wrinkles her nose and smiles at his expression. "Yeah, I know. But with all of them, dad had all the help he could want, he didn't need mine. So I just kind of… hung out, and picked things up."

"You learned all this just by hanging out?" He's even more impressed. "You should definitely talk to Mrs. Potts. Or go to Oscorp, they're big on tech, too. My old friend Harry's dad owns Oscorp, they're really nice. Or, I still have Happy's number, if you want it."

"If I… want it…" Her hands have stilled on the carpet thread and what he can see of her eyes are wide and shocked.

It makes him uncomfortable, honestly, to hear how awed her voice is that he would do something like that for her. He's used to people being thankful to him as Spider-Man, but not as Peter Parker, not as himself. He doesn't know how to respond, as he squirms on the couch. "Um… yeah, he likes me… he'd talk to you…"

Her head shoots up so abruptly that Peter reels backwards in surprise. "Thank you! Oh, that would be wonderful! I can't thank you enough!" She continues babbling her gratitude at him but Peter is having an existential crisis so he's no longer listening. When Callie's head shot up, her hair flew back from her petite face in a halo of honey brown. And when she leaned forward, that hair flew backwards with the sudden motion, revealing to his startled eyes, a jagged cut along her cheek and hairline, scabbed and red and just barely starting to heal.

"W-where did you get that?" His voice comes out a little breathless.

Her hand flies up and covers the offending injury swiftly, her eyes slide downward again, demure and embarrassed. "It's really stupid I – I fell off the ladder at work when I was shelving. And I must have hit the corner of the bookshelf on my way down because the next thing I knew I was bleeding." Her cheeks are lightly dusted with… mortification? Or anger maybe? He couldn't tell, and that made him nervous.

Peter nods, but inside he is wary, so wary because… because Callie is also smart, and he hasn't been paying attention to her location at night. She could be anywhere after closing hours at the library. That cut could easily come from crawling through a broken glass window.

Or it could have come from slipping off a ladder, like she said. Or falling down stairs or accidentally smacking her in the face with a hairbrush. She was so quiet and not confrontational in any way that it was a huge leap to fit her into the hole that Samantha fit so very, very well. Yes, she had an injury on her face that looked about three days old and yes, now that he thought about it, she _had_ grabbed her arm yesterday when Samantha had come home with her own injury. But that could have been empathy. She hadn't exhibited any injuries on any other occasion that he knew Inferno would have shown signs of a wound. Samantha was brash and loud and itching for a fight, whereas Callie would probably apologize to someone even if they poured hot soup in her lap. She had no ties to the wealthy upper class that Inferno targeted, whereas Samantha knew them personally.

It didn't fit. It didn't.

But still, the part of Peter that made him able to sense when a fight was coming, or to sense danger a mile away, was roiling inside his head uneasily. Because even though Samantha fit the mold like it was made for her…

… something about Callie fits that mold almost as well.


	15. Alexa I'm Sad, Play Despecito

**Title:** Love & Misadventure [Chapter 14: Alexa I'm Sad, Play Despicito]  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 2,300  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

He does what any good student would do when presented with multiple options: he panics. And then, after he calms himself down, writes a list.

There are several very important things that the girl who masquerades as Inferno would have as character traits. First and foremost, they are a woman, or average height and coloring. Age could not be determined since the mask covered most of her face. That person had nothing to occupy their times in the hours between sunset and sunrise. And they more than likely were middle class, either needing the money that come from selling stolen goods on the black market or had a personal vendetta against the bourgeoisie.

Out of that list, the first two fit Samantha and Callie perfectly. As well as thousands of other girls in the city. Hell, those first two fit his Aunt May, if he was being honest. Come to think of it – while Samantha certainly had a personal vendetta against the upper class (and against the first victim of Inferno specifically), Callie and his aunt were both middle class and both could use the money. Though his Aunt had been doing remarkably well at her waitress job lately, buying almost an entire new wardrobe in the past few weeks. That had to have cost a pretty penny…

He shook his head to clear it. Was he really contemplating that his Aunt May was actually Inferno on the side and she was using the no doubt millions of dollars to buy clothes? Well, and new furniture. And some new jewelry. And he'd never seen Callie or Samantha purchase… well, anything, really… apart from groceries and the necessary items they needed to survive. They both appeared as if they were living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to pay for their college classes. That didn't sound like someone who was stealing millions of dollars' worth of goods, did it?

And while his aunt might fit that part of the mold a little bit better than Callie, he had yet to see his aunt return from… wherever she was… at the crack of dawn sporting injuries, new or old. Whereas Callie had one (potentially two if her arm actually was wounded) injuries and he had seen Samantha with more than he could count on one hand. They both had access to Eric's pyro knowledge. They both worked at the library, though neither of them worked at any of the other government locations where these private artifacts were held. But Samantha did _personally_ know, and had been to, several of the homes where items were stolen. Including the Lamborghini, Peter had check social media records to verify. And Samantha had a reason to hate men, the primary target of all, not just some, but all, of Inferno's attacks. There was also tons of evidence to back the fact that criminals were obsessed with news reports and coverage of the crimes they've committed always trying to keep track and Samantha certainly was a hardcore Inferno fangirl.

Samantha _fits_.

But now he's beginning to doubt. Maybe there are many people who fit. Hundreds, thousands. Can he really continue to basically stalk a girl just because she's the only person that he knows personally that fits the criteria so well? What about all the others? What if there is someone who fits even better? Someone he's not looking at or has never met at all because he's been too busy focusing his attention elsewhere? That's not fair, that not the superhero way.

He suddenly, and fiercely, aches for Tony, who was always so good at calming him with a joke and could make Peter smile even when he was a ball of stress and one step away from a nervous breakdown. Tony said it was because it was because he always did what he wished someone would have done for him when he was younger. Tony would play it fast and loose here, but things would happen. And Steve – Peter misses his steadfastness and his ability to keep faith and remain true to himself even in the direst of situations. Steve would know the fair and honest way to learn the truth, he would be able to talk a lonely girl into seeing the error of her ways and hanging up her criminal ways.

There's a lump in his throat that he muscles down and away before it can reach his lips as a sob. He does his best to not let the sorrow get the better of him, knowing that they both died (and lived in Steve's case) doing what they were proud and honored to be doing: saving lives. Neither one of them would want their sacrifices to be met with tears. It would make Steve uncomfortable. And Tony would make a joke about he definitely _wasn't_ uncomfortable and deep down he would honestly be really moved and pleased.

But they're not here, and the only people left to talk to, that he would willingly go up and talk to, well… they don't seem like would be good at advice. But… but… time is running out, he can feel it. Aunt May keeps asking him when he's coming home. She's barely seen him the entire month of November. Finals are fast approaching, she's wondering if he's studying enough, if he'll be home for Christmas. He's wondering what he's offering his roommates in exchange for living there. He doesn't have answers for any of those questions, so he knows it won't long before May finally decides it's time for him to come home and he has to give up this vendetta against Inferno whether he's solved the case or not. Before that happens, he would at least like to clear Samantha's name while he has access to them. Callie's too while he's at it, just for peace of mind. Even though clearing their names won't solve the crime, it will be two less people to look towards for arrest. That would be something, at least. Better than what he has now.

So even though he's sure they're both be terrible at it, he heads out to track down the two people who might offer him some measure of advice.

"Just kill them both."

Peter feels his eyes shutter closed on an exasperated sigh. In the background of the phone he can hear Shuri shouting, but he can't make out the words. "Uh… no Mr. Barnes, I don't think that's really – "

"If one of them is this Inferno, the crimes will stop."

Peter shifts the phone more firmly against his ear. "Yeah, but what if neither one of them is Inferno?"

He can almost hear Bucky Barnes shrug at him though hundreds of miles and a force field separate them. "Then the burglaries will continue."

He sighs again. "And two innocent girls will be dead."

"Well, yeah." He sounds remarkably unconcerned for someone who just told a minor to murder two potentially innocent people.

There's sounds of a scuffle from the other end and he can hear Shuri and Bucky arguing loudly about whether Bucky's previous instructions constituted as 'murder' if a superhero committed them while investigating a crime. The last thing he hears is Shuri mutter something in Wakandan that sounds very threatening and then the line goes dead. He stares at his phone or a moment, wondering if he should try and call back. Not for more advice, that was clearly a waste of time, but to make sure that neither one of them were dead. After thinking about it, he decides that they can both hold their own and, if things got too deadly, someone would more than likely step in and stop the Winter Soldier from killing a foreign princess. Or would stop a princess from committing a murder. Probably.

Time for Plan B.

* * *

"Hi welcome to Dairy Queen, what can I do for you?"

"Uh, it's me, Mr. Lang, Peter… Peter Parker. We met – "

"Oh, yeah, hey Peter!" Ant-Man dressed in his Dairy Queen uniform makes Peter feel about a thousand times better that his alter ego is a high school student. At least he isn't scooping ice cream for minimum wage for screaming children. Even through the phone Peter can hear a children yelling about sprinkles in a frankly demonic chanting voice. "What's up, buddy?"

"I kind of need some advice?" There's a loud crash and the sound of breaking glass in the background. "Is this a bad time?"

"No, buddy, you're good!" His voice gets muffled for a moment, but Peter can just make out him telling someone else they've got the line while he takes a personal call. "What's up, kid?"

Briefly, Peter summarized the events of the past month or so. "I don't know what to do."

"Uh, well, that's a doozy, but like, she's not hurting anyone, right?"

He blinks. "No…."

"Then where's the harm?"

"I – what?"

"Well doesn't New York City have a ridiculously high crime rate? There's probably tons of other things to be solving right?"

"Yeah, but there's also a ton of other supes in this city, none of which are on _this_ case anymore."

"And all those things are probably insured anyway." Scott clearly isn't listening. "Those rich bastards probably don't really care that shit went missing, they just want the publicity of having their names and faces and ties to art in the news. Some of those thefts are probably insurance scams they're blaming on your baddie anyway."

He hadn't thought of that. "Still…"

"Sounds like she's giving them a little bit of what they deserve."

Scott continues talking about how the rich, upper class deserve what they get when their stuff is stolen. Serves them right for not using their money to invest in better security, it was just lazy on their part. He doesn't even seem to hear as Peter thanks him, bid him farewell, and hangs up. He just keeps talking. How could Peter have forgotten that Scott Lang was a thief in his previous life? Of course he would side with Inferno, he probably idolized her, too.

So that was two strikes on the advice giving from the other superheroes that he knew. Fantastic.

* * *

On his way to do laundry at his actually apartment he has once more stroke of insight that he'll ask his aunt for advice, which just goes to show Peter, that he does not have the gift of foresight, because it turns out to be another fail.

"No, Aunt May, it's just like – if you thought one of your friends was in trouble, how would you find out?"

"Ask them."

He barely stops from screaming. "Yeah, I can't do that." _Because if I'm right and they are a criminal they could attempt to murder me, so there's that_. "What else ya got?"

"Wait, why can't you just ask them? What are they involved in? Peter is it drugs? You'd tell me if it was drugs, right?"

"It isn't drugs, Aunt May!"

She sat back down in her chair from where she'd started to rise. Her expression was still confused. "Then I don't understand. It's not illegal, is it? Are you going to get hurt?"

Boy was he ever, but, though she knew that he helped people, the vast majority of how death-defying some of his stunts really were he kept secret from her. He couldn't in good faith tell her that one of the girls he was currently living with might be the masked criminal that could blaze the city down in a torrent of fire if given half a reason to. She'd blow her top. And what if it was _Aunt May_, then he'd be asking Inferno for advice about how to ask Inferno to reveal herself – his head hurt. He sighed. "No, never mind, Aunt May, I'll figure something out."

"Oh, but, wait – "

But he's already slung his laundry bag over his shoulder and headed back out, determined to come up with some sort of plan tonight, even if he has to stay up until sunrise. There has to be a way to prove, once and for all, whether or not Samantha (or Callie or even Aunt May) was actually Inferno.

As he swings by the library on his way to the apartment, the epiphany that hits him is so sudden and sharp that he almost falls out of the sky.

He simply has to give Inferno an injury so precise that there would be no mistaking it as coming from something else. There would be no way to excuse it and play it off as something else. There would be no masking it. He would _know_ once and for all. He didn't know exactly how to do that, not yet, but he had a vague idea of how to draw Inferno out, at least. He would need Ned for this, no doubt about that. He would definitely need a man in a chair. Then, at the end of it all, if the plan went well, he could catch a criminal by the end of the week. And hopefully he wouldn't be dead at the end of it either.

One could only hope.


	16. Then Perish

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (Chapter 15: Then Perish)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 3,729  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

His plan, according to Ned, is idiotic and he hopes that Peter leaves him his Lego Star Wars set and Spider suit when he inevitably dies. But he is a good friend, so he helps Peter orchestrate a way to make sure that Inferno will be in a certain place at a certain time. Luckily for Peter, his friend had basically memorized the _Treasures of New York City_ book that Samantha herself was so fond of. So he knows that there's a brand new gallery in the Metropolitan Museum of Art opening in two days, this coming Saturday.

The highlight?

A touring showcase of crown jewels from across the globe, generously loaned to the traveling gallery for the Christmas season. There are scepters and signet rings and crowns, all of precious stones, from all over, from ancient Aztec empires to the current monarchy of England, semiprecious tiger eye to rare black diamonds. It's the perfect place for a master thief to smash and grab, but, understandably, security is tight. So Peter and Ned propose the old divide and conquer plan that has worked so many times throughout history.

"Okay, so I'm going to work on my web shooter. There has to be a way to create an electric magnetic pulse that will resonate through the web, strong enough to leave a noticeable mark that will last at least a day but weak enough that it… well, that it won't kill her."

"That sounds like a plan, but what am I supposed to do? And how do you even know that Inferno is willing to take the risk?" Ned waved a hand at the blueprints to the museum's security system that Peter in no way, shape, or form coerced from the Chief of Security by promising to go to his child's birthday party in March. "Have you seen this? We need like nine more people if you're planning on Ocean 11-ing this thing."

"Well she's never willing to take the risk, so I thought maybe we could… tell a little lie?" Ned blinks, but doesn't say anything so Peter continues. "I thought we could make a phone call to the museum about our willingness to donate an ancient, family heirloom to the museum for the duration of the tour, and then have a news report done on it during the 5 o'clock news. I know the news always plays in the storage room at that time when Callie and Samantha are doing shift change, so I'm pretty sure they'll both see it."

"Okay… and how are we, as high school dorks, going to get the news to do what we want?"

Peter didn't want to mention that he was basically bribing people with selfies and birthday party visits and that he was pretty sure he could convince at least one news anchor to do this for him as a favor, so he shrugged. "I know a guy."

Ned did not look convinced, but he also didn't argue. "And, in case you haven't noticed, we don't have any heirlooms." Peter glances away. "That's where the lying comes in, isn't it?" He sighed as Peter nodded. "And, dare I ask, who's going to make that call?" Peter plastered the most innocent expression he could on his face. "Ah man, why me?"

"Because you know all about that kind of shit – you and Samantha were practically drooling over Inferno's heist on some necklace."

"Broach."

"Whatever! You could pretend to be a private owner who wants to bring some heirloom something or other back into the light of day and you thought this would be perfect for it."

"I… guess I could do that…"

"But remember, the exhibit is all crown jewels, so it's got to be something royal."

"But that makes it way harder!"

"_Meanwhile_," Peter continued, ignoring his friend and his whining, "After I've convinced – talked to my news reporter friend – I have to tweak the web shooter and make it so it leaves a semi-permanent, but not life threatening, mark on Inferno so I can identify her the next day." He stared hard at Ned. "Would you rather do all that?"

"Yes!"

"Well, too bad! You can't!"

With that dispute childishly settled, the two start planning their respective parts in all of this. Ned takes to scouring the Internet or obscure records off crown jewels that are "lost" or "presumed fake" and tries to plan out his story for the museum. Peter starts looking up local news anchors, looking for a young, millennial that would be likely to be swayed with a shout out on Spidey Snapchat. He finally settles all his hopes on one Rebecca Stanford, a young up and coming anchor who's reached the top based on her name, but remained their due to her ability to get todays millennials and gen z kids watching the news. Then he has to wait another three hours to put the finishing touches on his story.

"Bro, are you making love to that computer – just call the museum!"

Ned looks up from his notes on his laptop with a frown. "It's not a Tinder profile, Peter, it has to be perfect, nowhere to ask questions or anything. Besides, I'm done anyway." Peter groans and slams his head on the table, only half-listening as Ned calls the museum curator, affects a fake accent – where he's supposed to be from Peter can't tell – and word vomits this long concocted story about an heirloom ankh that had been in his family for generations, ever since a great, great, great, great uncle had married an Egyptian who was related to a servant who had worked for the pharaoh that the charm had belonged to.

Peter couldn't hear exactly what the person on the other end said, but it sounded like they were gushing exuberantly. "So that's a go?" He asked when Ned hung up.

"Yup, my part here is done bro."

"Great…" He drags the word out as he slowly hauls himself to his feel. Time to go bribe a news anchor.

* * *

Okay, that turns out to be surprisingly easy. All Rebecca want, which she states bluntly and to-the-point as soon as he asks for a favor, is an exclusive interview with him if this results in Inferno's capture. The _only_ interview, she says, that he'll give on the story. She wants the scoop.

Fine, whatever. Cool.

So he agrees, and she promises to run a lengthy report on the new item at the museum tomorrow at five. With that promises he calls Ned to tell him the second half of Peter's plan for him, that there was no point in telling him unless this went off well. He needs Ned to hack the security system for the museum and make it look as easy as pie to break into. Ned rants and raves and sounds very displeased, but underneath all of that Peter can tell he's tickled pink to be doing actual 'guy in the chair' stuff. So after his token argument against why it's a terrible idea that they'll get caught and go to prison, he agrees and immediately tells Peter to stop wasting his time chatting on the phone because he has important hacking to do.

With that plan in motion, Peter heads towards Aunt May's, where all of his tools are hidden in the AC vent to spend the next two days working on a way to adjust the electric pulse in a Taser to something more refined and easier to control. By the time he's been working for an hour he's electrocuted himself twice; his fingers are tingling and his hair is standing on end. It's a nightmare. There's a brief respite for dinner in which he doesn't shock himself with anything, but then he accidently shuts the power off for ten city blocks and he hopes they can't trace the outage to its epicenter because Aunt May would be livid.

While his aunt lights candles and texts people she knows from the neighborhood, Peter frantically works on repairing the damage he did. It takes him two hours, but suddenly the power flickers back to life and he breathes an audible sigh of relief. Okay, so that didn't work. Time for Plan… what plan was he on, now? Maybe it was Plan J. He's starting to make mistakes because he's starting to stress about everything. But time is running out. He as school tomorrow morning and he'll lose eight hours of time that could be spent planning this. Because tomorrow night is the night the crown jewels will be moved and set up in the exhibit for Saturday's event. Tomorrow night is the night Inferno will strike.

For a long moment he almost loses faith, but then he remembers a previous villain Iron Man had once battled, before Peter had ever been Spider-Man. Whiplash had arc-reactor based electric whips. All Peter had to do was semi-replicate that without making them killing machine. He'd been focusing on creating a webbing that housed electricity, but instead maybe he should make the web material a smoother conductor and adjust the shooter to send a pulse down the web when the two of them were in contact.

The idea gives him a new wave of confidence and he pulls an all-nighter trying to bring it to fruition. But, by the time the first blush of morning is creeping over the city skyline, he had a finished product on his wrist. Strong enough to leave a mark, but not deadly. Now all he had to worry about was getting close enough to Inferno to use it without getting flambéd into a baked Alaska.

At least he won't have to worry about the holiday ball then.

* * *

He frets and worries and twitches through school, wide-awake with nerves for someone who's been up for twenty-four hours. He knows he should head home and sleep but he's so nervous he doesn't think he'll be able to. Only the thought that he might make a foolish mistake in his potential fight cause him to head home and grab a few hours of sleep. When he wakes, it's sunset, the sky a bruised and vibrant purple gold that looks like it's studded with diamonds as the stars begin to wink to life. A beautiful night for a grand theft and a battle. Just the kind of thing every New Yorker looks forward to on a Friday night, right?

Suiting up feels like he's dressing for a funeral. He's terrified that Inferno won't show up tonight and all of his and Ned's planning and work these past two nights will have been in vain. That the breadcrumbs they've planted with the allure of a shitty security system will be seen through by her as a trap and she doesn't take the bait. He's terrified that she _does_ show and that she's not anyone he knows, which means that there are millions of possible of people out there he has to search for to find the real Inferno. But mostly he's scared that it goes well and that Inferno is exactly who he thinks she is, a young girl who his best friend is extremely fond of, who shouldn't be punished for making bad decisions due to some of the terrible loopholes life through her pampered life. He's scared she won't listen to reason and he'll have to do something he really regrets.

When he swings in through the upper window he'd picked open and lightly drops to the floor, not a single alarm blares. _Thanks Ned… and sorry I'm using you as collateral damage museum…_ It's as quiet as a tomb in here and his breathing sounds so loud to his ears he's sure anyone in the building would hear him coming from a mile away, so he forces himself to breathe slower, steadier, as he slinks across the walls, head cocked as he listens for any sound or sign of entry.

It takes almost an hour before he hears it, the gentle tapping of someone looking for a weak spot on the glass dome overhead. With a swing and a scurry, he makes his way up to his open window and pops out. Inferno is channeling her inner Catwoman, as she gently and methodically pries a human-sized hole in the glass with a small instrument. It's quiet up here, so late at night, so far above all the traffic, that he can clearly hear the glass cracking.

"Looking for something?"

His soft voice in the dead night air startles her and, with a curse, she drops her tool. It bounces a few panels away, but none of the glass shatters. With a frown he can sense, even if he can't see it in the dark, she stands, slow and sure of herself. He can see her teeth flashing like the Cheshire cat beneath the dark mask that covers the top half of her face. "Hey, it's the kid. Come to check out the bling?"

"I came to ask you to stop, Inferno."

She laughs, and the sound is like breaking glass. "Stop? What for?"

"This is wrong and you know it." He's moving closer, slowly, slowly enough that she doesn't sense the threat, the trap. _Step into my parlor… _he thinks ironically, _said the spider to they fly…_

"Do I now? What makes you think that? Because it's _stealing_? Do you know that all, _all_, of these people made enough off their insurance to buy new yachts or mansions or polo ponies. They should be _thanking_ me for what I've done for them. They don't care about these things, they only care about the pomp and circumstance, the glamor." He's inching closer, trying to find a piece of uncovered skin that isn't on her face. "They don't need this money… but I sure as hell do."

"But why?" He's starting to think he's going to have to electrocute her face because that's the only uncovered patch of skin he can see, when she tilts her head up defiantly to answer him.

"That's none of your business, kid." He ignores the nickname, staring at the swathe of uncovered throat her motion has revealed to him.

_Oh man_, he thinks, _I better get this right on the first try or she's going to jump from theft to murder like it's no body's business._ He settles back on the balls of his feet, ready to try and do what he came here for. _Well, here goes nothing_…

And he jumps forward.

* * *

She's shocked, he can see it from the way her mouth falls open in a perfect little 'o' before it snaps shut and she collects herself. He winds up grasping at air when she activates her hover boots with a tap of her heel. Her ascent is unsteady, but it does the trick and keeps her out of harm's way. He makes a few more half-assed attempts to jump up and pull her down by the proverbial (and literal) bootstraps, but they all end the same way as the first. He crouches, watching her warily for signs of an attack, but she's watching his with her head cocked to the side.

"Did you set this up?"

Busted. "I just wanted to talk."

"To _talk_? To talk me out of it?" She scoffs. "You realize this is technically entrapment, right, kid? I mean this wouldn't hold up in a court of law."

"What about all your other crimes? Would those hold up?"

"Well, yeah, those would hold." Her voice has laughter in it. For a moment she hovers there, as he hops higher on the roof turrets, hoping to even the distance between them, trying to look inconspicuous and innocent. She keeps adjusting herself so that he always remains in her sight, but she doesn't seem concerned. "What was your plan if I said yes – sweet talk the police into letting me go?"

His mouth remains firmly closed because, yes, that had been his exact plan, but no need to tell her that.

She breaks out into a barking laugh because she must be able to sense his answer from his stony, silence. "Oh you're something else, Bug Boy, really." He remains quiet, not letting her names or taunts get to him. "And when I inevitably said no? Is your plan to fight me?"

A shrug. "Maybe. But I'm hoping it doesn't come to that." He wants to add her name, to say _Samantha_ in a sure and resolute tone, but he can't, not until he's 100% positive that it's her and not someone else. "I'm hoping you'll realize how foolish this is. There's a reason people don't remain villains for long."

"Because they retire with all the money they've made?" Her voice is hopeful.

"Because they go to jail. Or die."

The deep breath she takes makes Peter hopeful that the next thing out of her mouth will be a contrite apology or a soft _I don't want to die_. That's how this always plays out in the movies and in comic books anyway. It's usually followed by a romantic kiss in the rain or with a sunset backdrop, but he has a very firm belief that his life will never be that cool, so he glosses over those parts. But, instead, what comes out her mouth next, is war.

"Not if I kill you first!" And then her whip of fire materializes in her hand and she snaps it forward with Indiana Jones-like accuracy.

The next few moments he's running for his life in an undignified blur of motion, only barely managing to remain a few scant inches ahead of her fiery weapon. He can feel the heat of it licking down his spine, as hot and as humid as dragon's breathe. When the barrage stops, he's perched precariously on the edge of the highest part of the roof, and Inferno is hovering just below him, looking up at him with a devilish smirk.

"How strong are you, little bug?"

His own head cocks to the side.

"If this building fell down on top of you, do you think you'd survive?" The way she's twirling the whip dangling in her hand and staring at the building below them is making him pretty sure the entire museum is going to go crashing down, with him on it, if he doesn't make his move soon.

"What makes you think I wouldn't take you down with me?"

When she throws back her head and laughs scornfully, as he was hoping she would do, he makes his move. With a quick move he lets a little web out, twisting it into a quick lasso and then he snaps his own wrist forward, letting the webbing slid through his fingers in a perfect arc, falling as gracefully as a snowflake over Inferno's head to settle on her shoulders. With a tug, he tightens the noose.

She looks shocked. And afraid. "So now you're just going to kill me? That escalated quickly, especially for you."

"No, now I'm going to do this." With another twitch of his fingers, he presses the brand new button on his web-shooter and a pulsing electric pulse resonates down the web.

The scream that comes pouring out of Inferno's mouth momentarily shocks Peter and he almost slips backwards off the window ledge. He barely catches himself in time to make a desperate jump down to a lower rooftop to save Inferno from hanging herself when she plummets out of the sky. When her boots hit the concrete, her legs crumble and Peter lets the pulse fade from his web, wrenching his wrist to snap the webbing off. He walks over to her slowly, still wary that she wasn't over dramatizing her pain, but still wanting to make sure she's okay.

Inferno is laying in a heap on the roof, her breath panting and ragged. Her eyes are wild, glaring up at him with so much anger they're practically shooting sparks. But underneath all of that, she looks… terrified. There's a large part of her that thinks Peter might walk up to her and kill her. What a life she must have had to think that of heroes, and of other people in general.

"I'm not going to kill you." His voice is quiet, echoing in the empty night air.

"Why should I believe you?"

"You shouldn't. You have no reason to, honestly, but I'm giving you my word that I won't kill you. Not now, not ever. That's not the kind of hero, or the kind of person, I want to be." He watches her struggling to pull herself up. "Do you want me to call anyone? I know a nurse down in Hell's Kitchen who doesn't ask questions."

"Go stuff yourself." She yanks the noose from around her neck, gingerly touching the skin there, raw and red, but not bleeding. He knows it will leave a mark, but wonders if she does. He wonders if she'll cover it if one shows up in the morning. "Why did you do it? To prove that you could have mercy?"

He can't tell her that he wants to out her tomorrow, she might skip town. "Yes." The word tastes hollow in his mouth, like lead or dust, because he doesn't want to do things like that. Show people that he could take their lives with the flick of a wrist. He wants to do good. He wants to help people. But, for now, she can't know that. "So just remember that the next time you're about the steal something." He leaves her sitting there as he leaps off the nearest ledge towards the street, not giving her the chance to retaliate or reply.

_Hopefully I'll see you tomorrow…_


	17. I Can't Believe You've Done This

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (Chapter 16: I Can't Believe You've Done This)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,286  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

The rest of the night, Peter is a ball of nervous energy. He sleeps on Callie's couch, twitching at any noise, sure that it's Samantha returning from her night of crime. The townhouse creaks, the pipes whine, horns blare from the street outside, at three o'clock in the morning the phone rings twice and then cuts off. Once he hears the patter of footsteps from upstairs but he cannot tell where they're coming from or where they're heading. He sleeps in spurts of fifteen or thirty minutes at a time. By the time he can make out the softest blush of dawn creeping through the windows, he gives up.

He waits, knowing that both girls work the early morning shift on Saturday, a notoriously busy day for libraries about to be backed with students. But by 11 AM, not only he is a nervous, jittery mess on his fourth cup of coffee, there's still no signs of them. He finally has to admit that either they snuck by him while he was sleeping (unlikely, given his state of almost vigilant twitchiness last night) or neither one of them slept here last night. And while a part of him wondered who those footsteps he heard above him last night belonged to, the larger part of him was wondering if Samantha skipped town.

"Dammit, Parker," he muttered to himself, gulping down his cup of cold coffee and running out the door. He could probably swing there in ten minutes, but a Saturday morning at noon? Finding a place to switch back into civilian clothing would be like finding a unicorn. So he takes a cab, regretfully forking over the last of the money his aunt had given him and just barely resists telling the driver to 'step on it.' The entire drive, his thoughts are awhirl with scenarios of Inferno skipping town, or of her attacking him when he reveals that he knows her villainous alter-ego.

Tripping up the stairs in his rush to set his eyes on his wayward roommate, he bursts through the doors in an out of breath huff.

Looking shocked, Samantha is behind the help desk, talking to two elderly women. She's looking prim and proper and not at all like someone who was in a rooftop fight last evening, her hair coiffed and elegant glasses perched on the rim of her nose. She looks every inch the knowledgably librarian, right down the coal-black pencil skirt and tight white turtleneck. When he stalks over, he doesn't quite manage to hide the triumph in his voice. "What happened to your neck?"

She blinks, her eyes sliding to the two woman she was helping. "I'm sorry ladies, will you excuse me for one moment?" She turns her smiling face away from them and that same polite expression drops when her gaze lands on Peter. "What?"

"Your neck? What happened?"

"Nothing." Her confused expression is good, he'll admit that. But Samantha, with her killer body, had never worn a top that didn't show off her assets in the entire month that he had known her, even last week when it was 21 degrees in the city.

"I know you're lying."

"Holy shit Peter." She gives a distracted, placating smile to the women who are watching the conversation with avid interest and then leans over the counter, closer to him, so she can hiss under her breath. "I have hickies, okay?"

"Hickies?" His voice is not as soft as hers had been and the two woman, grandmotherly age if they were a day, both frown at Samantha judgmentally, and then wander off. "

"Great, freakin' awesome," she says as she watches them go. "Yes, hickies, is that a crime now, Detective Peter?"

"But – " He must still look unconvinced, because she screams under her breath and pulls down the rim of the sweater just enough to show him a ring of mouth shaped bruises around her swan-like throat. "How – "

"I went to see Gabriel last night, okay? Are you happy now?" His expression speaks volumes. "No, of course you're not. I'm not happy about it either." Her expression is pouting. "What is your deal anyway?"

Peter manages to look first horrified, then remorseful, then confused all in the span of a few moments as he comes to terms with the fact that the girl he rescued from her abusive boyfriend is back together with him. Or at the very least is sleeping with him again. "Nothing! Nothing! I was just wondering! I'm sorry, it's none of my business!" As he's speaking, he's backing away, because, even with his numerous and continuous apologies, Samantha is glaring at him with murder in her eyes. He's not giving much thought to the people he keeps bumping into, people that are trying to reach the help desk or make their way to the front counter with stacks of books. Not until he shoulder checks someone who cries out in a high feminine voice, followed by the sound of a multitude of books tumbling to the floor.

With a new splurge of apologies already on his lips, he turns with a spin, arms windmill-ing. But his motion is far too chaotic, the swing of his arms too wide, and one of his hands snags against a piece of fabric and he hears it tear with a sense of growing horror. Callie, who had been staring at the pile of books Peter had knocked to the floor with distress, but her eyes widen when his hand snags her scarf and tears it off in in a flutter of fabric, she goes positively ashen, watching with round eyes as the blue and purple fabric flutters gently to the floor.

"I'm _so sorry_, Callie! I didn't mean to… to…" Peter trails off as his eyes take in what he's seeing. "What… _what happened to your neck_?" The question is a sickened whisper as he stares at the jagged, red, ring around her throat.

She blinks and her hand raises to lightly brush against the welt. Her freckles stand out like grains of pepper in a sea of salt. "My neck…? I… I burned myself with my curling iron…"

"Your hair isn't curly." He can feel the slow roil of dread creeping up his stomach and into his throat like a wave of frogs trying to get out. It makes him nauseous with it.

"I… stopped…"

"_Stop lying_!" A few people turn to stare and Samantha is watching avidly from her command center, so he steps closer so he can lower his voice for just the two of them "I know where you got that mark." Her brow furrows, and then an inkling starts to glimmer in her eyes, a dawning realization of how that could be possible. He knows that it's a gamble, a risk, to tell her who he really is, that he's Spider-Man. It gives her an advantage over him, it lets her know what – who – his weaknesses are. But still, she has to know that she can trust him. "I _know_, Callie. I know who you really are."


	18. Is This a Cutscene?

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (Chapter 17: Is This a Cutscene?)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,978  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

The universe had to be fucking kidding! Peter 'Pretty Boy' Parker, the dork who Eric said looked like a sad, bedraggled Basset Hound, the boy who looked flustered whenever a girl so much as looked at him… he was Spider-Man? This kid who had taken Samantha out on a date was the same hero who posted Instagram photos with fans? Peter, who looked like he weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, was the same hero who could yeet a city bus across Central Park like it was nothing? A kid who looked like he didn't understand a single word she said when she spoke about car, somehow managed to not only rig his webs to leave a visible mark on her, but orchestrate a trap with the museum and the news to entice her to meet him on the rooftops?

She opens her mouth to answer, but over the head of library patrons she can see Samantha's keen interested gaze and knows that she can sense that something important is happening. There are people speaking to her and calling for her attention, but she is solely focused on Peter and Callie's heated whispered conversation several feet away. "Not here." She hesitates only a fraction of a second before grabbing Peter's wrist and dragging him back to the breakroom, leaving her books a strewn mess on the floor. He's silent the entire walk and she's very aware of his wrist in her hand, a single twist and she could interlock their fingers and… no.

When they arrive, there's a pair of employees on break, staring at their phones and chatting, but Callie's barked demand of, "Get out," in a tone that gave no room for argument had them scurrying from the room. She drops his wrist like it's a burning coal and turns to face him, arms folded, expression wary and defiant.

She watches him click the door closed before he turns, leaning against it, across the room from her. His expression is sad and she has a hard time reconciling the fact that this is the same superhero she sees swinging from buildings and flinging himself off of skyscrapers and battling demonic space aliens. "Why?"

His voice is so quiet that the only reason she hears it is because there is nothing but dead silence between them, and it echoes in the sterile room. She shrugs. There's a sudden spark of irritation in his doe-like eyes that immediately makes her equal parts pleased and upset. She settles for an answer that doesn't really answer him. "Does it really matter?"

"It does to me, Callie."

There's a lot of things she could say, a lot of reasons she could give. That she hated being looked down on, so she made a way to rise above people and be the one looking down on them. She could say that she hated that her father focused so much of his training and passed so much of his knowledge down to his sons, her brothers, simply because they were male, even though they had no interest in it and she did. So Callie became better than them, better than her father. Callie could say that she just wanted to prove that she was smart and had a brilliant idea to make the world better but that no one could see past her mousy coloring and her introverted exterior, so she became the very antithesis of herself so she could _make_ them notice her, so that they had no choice.

Or she could say that she liked stealing, that she liked showing the elite upper class that sometimes shit happened that you couldn't control and there was nothing you could do about it. She could say she did it for laughs or the thrill of danger or the exhilaration of success.

But she didn't say any of those things, even though some of them were a little bit of the truth. None of them was the whole truth. But there was some kind of earnest hypnotism in his eyes that compelled her to just answer him. So she told him, the easiest and simplest version of why she had done it.

"I was rejected."

"By who?" She can see him thinking about the thefts, the targets. "Someone rich? Or your parents? Your boyfriend?"

Both cliché and obvious answer. "No, you idiot, by MIT."

She can see that he had not expected 'higher education' to be the reason someone chose to enter a life of crime and this is probably the only time she'll ever get to give her villainous monologue, so her goes nothing. "I was a genius in school, but my parents didn't have money for fancy private schools, so regular public school it was. But regular school bored me, it was too easy, too dull. I always did poorly because I was trying to work on something bigger, better, than they could offer. It meant there were no scholarship opportunities based on my less than stellar grades when I graduated last year. So I applied with proposed research programs, studies I had already been working on and been putting into effect for years."

"… The nanotechnology?"

"Yeah, and none of them would bite. Said it was too cerebral or too futuristic. Or wanted to buy my research off of me to give to one of their _male_ grad students to conduct. So there I was, broke, alone, desperate to get this research off the ground. Research that will _help_ people, help the world, Peter."

"So you became a thief?" The leap is apparently too great for him, his mind too pure to see how one suddenly decided on a life of criminal activity and wanted posters. "I don't under –"

"I was made an offer," Callie clarified, "that would have made me an idiot to refuse." He looks so lost and confused, clearly unable to link the Callie that he has come to know with the one he's seeing right now in front of him. He knows a shy, mechanic with a penchant for staying away from crowds, while this Callie is brash and sure of herself and what she has done. She has a suspicious that the real her is somewhere in the middle. "I make… commissions… off of the items I'm contracted to steal."

"A commission from who?"

She does not want to answer, but he will more than likely make the connection with the queen of the underground here in New York City. "The Red Queen." She can see the moment the name registers with him, the shock, the awe, the intrigue. The Red Queen got her name from her vibrant red hair (a wig, Callie had come to learn, to better disguise her from those in the real world) and the fact that she ruled the underworld here in New York City with an iron fist. There was no piece of paraphernalia that went in and out of this city without her knowing about, no hits, no smash and grabs, no burglaries, so nothing. She knew the ins and outs of every single non-legal thing that went on in the Big Apple. Police were dying to get their hands on her, to find out the kind of dirt she could give them, see what kinds of deals they could make with her. She sees that interest in his eyes and knows what it means. "You will never catch her."

He blinks and the interest in his eyes melts into confusion. "What… no… I was just thinking… that it makes sense why you steal such high profile items, if it's for her." It's her turn to look confused and his turn to explain. "Just, if you were doing this just for money for research or school or something, there's less prolific items that would cover the cost of those." He looks uncomfortable with her hard, incredulous stare. "It's just… with the Red Queen as your… boss, I guess? It just makes a lot of sense, is all."

"Don't… don't try to figure me out." Her voice is softer than she wanted it to be, more vulnerable, and she hates it. Hates that, with one little sentence he has undone her.

He swallows and seems to gather himself, squaring his shoulders and standing straight. She notices suddenly that he's taller than her. He's so slight and, with his tendency to slouch, appears smaller. But now she finds that she has to tilt her chin up to meet his eyes as he speaks. "I just meant that… that it seems to me that a lot of what you do that's… illegal, is done… because of someone else. That, maybe, if you had someone to back your research or a scholarship or something… you could… stop?"

What is his game? "Are you suggesting that I leave the underground? Like it's that easy?" He couldn't be that naïve, that innocent, could he? Though she did hear a news report where he rescued a cat from a tree, so maybe he could…

"So the Red Queen is forcing you to do this?" The hopeful tone in his voice is almost too much to handle. It's been a long time since anyone thought there was enough good in her to be hopeful about.

If only it were that simple. "I am… in her debt." Unbeknownst to poor, privileged Peter Parker, Anita had given Callie complete access to her lab. Callie could conduct her research in peace, free of charge. And all she asked for in return was that Callie collect a few items every now and then. That wasn't so much to ask, not really, not in the scheme of things. She could be asking Callie to commit murder, or assist in a human trafficking ring, or test chemicals on animals. There were many, many worse things Anita could ask her to do.

"But maybe you could just – "

"No, Peter. No buts." She sighs, realizing what she'll have to do to get out of this tiny office. "There is no getting out of this for me. When my debt to the Red Queen has been paid, in full, then I can lay up my proverbial coat. And not one moment before." He starts to speak again, but she holds up a hand to interrupt whatever glowing, optimistic mumbo jumbo was about to come out of his mouth. When she steps closer, he doesn't back away. She doesn't know whether it irritates her that he's not scared of her, that he apparently trusts her, or electrifies her that someone has so much faith in her.

It's unfortunately, in this moment, very misplaced, since, when Callie leans close, closer, closest to him, he's completely vulnerable and completely open for her to slam her knee into his stomach and then her elbow down onto his head. He slumps to the floor with a resounding thump.

She crouches down next to him, staring at his face, slack with unconsciousness, taking in the arched cheekbones, the sloe-eyes, as bright as almonds. There's a hint of the man he'll become in the angle of his jaw, but his cheeks are still chubby with adolescence. He is adorable. Callie pats his cheek fondly. "Sorry, Mr. Parker.


	19. Les I'm Miserables

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (Chapter 18: Les I'm Misérables)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,708  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

When he wakes, his head is aching and it takes him a long time to differentiate the pounding in his head and the pounding at the door. He blinks, trying to make sense of his surroundings. He's lying on a cold, linoleum floor and –

Callie!

He shoots up as his memories come flooding back. The discovery of who Inferno really is, Callie's confession. And then being struck and left on the cold ground like a discarded bath towel. He can hear Samantha's voice, muffled and yelling through the door, and he reaches up and around to unclick the lock and twist it open. She pours in, slamming the door into his still mostly prone body in her haste to enter the room.

"What the fu- Peter? What the hell are you doing on the floor? What is going on? Callie dipped twenty minutes ago in the middle of a rush and I was about to call the cops to get in?" She glaring down at him, all righteous anger, hands on her hips, eyes flashing. "Tell me what's going on. Right. Now."

"She's Inferno." A little of the anger on Samantha's face melts away and transforms into confusion. "Callie is Inferno."

"What? Kid, are you okay?"

"Stop it," he said when she morphs into concerned and worried, clearly thinking he was on a bender or something. "I'm Spider-Man. Callie's Inferno." He stands with a groan, rubbing at the lump slowly forming on his head. "Can we just skip the part where you don't believe me and I have to prove to you and then you get all excited slash worried slash scared. I'm _exhausted_. I'd like to fast forward to the part we can just deal with it?"

She's blinking rapidly, trying to take all of that in. "… are you being fucking serious right now?"

"There's not a single part of me that is kidding." He is so far from kidding. He's exhausted, but he'll be damned if he lets Callie Jones continue this life of crime when it was so obvious to him that she was a good person. "And I'm going to save her."

* * *

Samantha is annoyed beyond belief that her boss makes her finish the shift at the library, even though she claims there's a family emergency. No go.

"Sorry, but Callie already skipped out, and we're in the middle of all these students studying for finals. Stick it out."

She showcases an important finger to her boss's back, but she finishes her shift while Peter slumps in the café nursing a chai tea and positively mopping into his cup. Her frown and seething aura mean the people requesting her help are diminished, but she works all the way up until three when the closing staff start coming in. Then Peter finds himself forcibly dragged out of the library, into a cab, and back to their townhouse. She promptly shoves him on the couch and stands in front of him. "Okay, explain. From the beginning."

It takes… a long time.

Peter tries to start at the beginning of his story with Callie, but Samantha clarifies that she wants him to start at _the beginning_, so he has to go all into detail about his own origins and his own history and that takes a substantial amount of time. He's already exhausted by the time he gets to his first meeting with Inferno and his epiphany that Samantha and Inferno are the same person.

"Is that why you asked me out?"

"Uh… no?"

She snorts. "It's okay if it was, you're a little young for me."

"And you clearly prefer Gabriel Styx."

She nodded in assent of his irritated tone, acknowledging how stupid her decision to slink off back to him was. "Yeah, well, the only other guy I ever liked was Eric – "

"Then why don't – "

"- who's gay – "

"Who's _what_?!"

"- so maybe third time will be the charm, right?" Her smile is sad and Peter promises himself rashly that, as soon as this business with Callie is finished and closed, he going to find Samantha a boyfriend.

"Well, yeah, anyway, maybe that _was _the reason I asked you out, but it's not why I protected you. Though maybe it is why I agreed to live with you."

"Which turned out to be a blessing in disguise for you since you were wrong about me."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "I was close, okay?"

She laughed, head thrown back. There's a chaotic mess of pizza boxes and Dorito bags and soda cans around her on the floor that spill up to Peter on the couch, surrounding them in mess and showcasing how long they've been sitting here. "Okay, so you think I'm Inferno and you ask me out then you wind up living with me and the _real_ Inferno. Then what?"

So then he goes through his plan, and trapping her and making sure he'll have a way to know her when he sees her again. That was the reason, he tells her, that he was asking about the bruises on his neck. But then there was Callie, with her own marks, with no explanation that made sense, and then he was in a locked room with her and she was explaining everything to him: the why and the how. And then, of course, she was knocking him unconscious and fleeing. "Did you see where she went when she left?"

Samantha shrugged. "Not really, but that was hours and hours ago, it wouldn't even matter now, would it?"

"No, I guess not." He sighs, slumping down, lost in his thoughts.

"So what's the plan?"

Startled, he looks up to see Samantha's bright-eyed gaze on him. "What?"

"The plan? What do we do next? I'm helping, of course. So what do you want me to do?"

"I don't… I don't know." Callie could be literally anywhere in the city. By the time he started looking she could be outside the state, even the country. The Red Queen had a near bottomless resources, if Callie was her prodigy or even if she was even slightly fond of her, the Queen could send her anywhere, give her a new name, a new life. Peter would never find her. But would Callie go? "We need to find her… if she's still in the city."

"Do you think she is?"

It was his turn to shrug. "I have to go on the assumption that she is, don't I? I mean, that's the only way I can keep trying to help her. If she left then… then I can't… save her."

There is a long silence as they both think on that. Callie is quiet and shy, or she was with most people. But they had lived, worked, hung out with her. They'd seen her cry watching Disney movies even though she'd seen them before. They're seen her snort lemonade out of her nose at a joke Eric had made. They'd seen half-asleep at eight in the morning because only the blackest cup of coffee could bring her back to the land of the living. They _knew_ her. It was just a matter of if they knew her as well as they thought they did.

"Well…" Samantha said, after a long moment, "Where should we look?"

* * *

So they looked. They looked everywhere. Samantha spoke to her manager at the library who told her Callie had told her she needed a medical leave of absence and would no longer be returning to work. Peter spoke to her landlord, saying he was worried about her and wondering if he'd heard anything. All the landlord, a tiny, wizened, old woman knew was that Callie had left her a check in her mail that was large enough to cover the rent for the next year and let no forwarding address or number for contact. Eric (after Samantha demanded they tell him what was happening) sweet-talked their supervisor into giving him the number to Callie's family. When he asked if they heard from her recently, they promptly told him no and hung up. Ned checked with all the colleges in the state with an amazing tech program on the slim chance she had a change of heart and decided to hang up her boots.

Everything turned up dead ends. Nothing but big, fat dead ends that lead nowhere.

So then it was old-fashioned boots-on-the-ground searching. They looked in coffee houses, showed her photograph to other libraries and book stores. They scoured museum surveillance cameras. Peter even, shaking in his proverbial boots, talked to the Punisher to see if he'd heard anything on the Black Market front. His terrifying response was that he didn't work with criminals, he killed them. So after changing into a clean pair of spandex, Peter vowed to never speak to that man again. Ever.

So now they were back to Square One. Her family, her friends, her acquaintances, her job. All turned up nothing. All her most frequently visited places. All nothing. Even the most popular and least popular places. They looked _everywhere_. Ned used two sick days from school holed up in Eric's room (using his own sick days from work) both being the guy in the chair and monitoring every camera in New York City with facial recognition software. They looked like zombies at the end of their 48-hour bender and they had still found nothing.

The four of them were beginning to lose hope of every finding Inferno before she did something rash.

And Peter was losing hope in finding Callie before she hurt someone. Or hurt herself.


	20. Oh Hi, Thanks For Checking In

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (Chapter 19: Oh Hi, Thanks For Checking In)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,356  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

This was all so depressing. Well, and exciting, she supposed. Her friend was her favorite supervillain! But, you know, she was also on the lamb and involved in the Black Market Underground and might wind up dead, so, again, so depressing.

Samantha sighed, tapping her pen repetitively against the help desk at the library, counting down the minutes until her shift was over. It was really so not fair that she hadn't figured this out sooner or that Callie hadn't told her. She knew how much Samantha looked up to Inferno for being such a badass. Though, now that she thought about it, there was no way in hell she would have been able to figure that out without some outside help. Callie was so unlike Inferno that a part of Samantha still didn't believe Peter. She was so quiet and shy, turning into a blushing, nervous wreck every time Peter walked over and asked her something. She seemed to have no interest in wealth, no propensity for fire, no flare for dramatics, or an overt amount of stealthy ability.

The only that that Samantha could draw a connection with, was that Callie was smarter than she had thought. Sure, she knew that it took some amount of skill to be a mechanic, more skill to be a good one, and even more skill to be a great one. Honestly thought Samantha didn't know anything about cars, so to her that wasn't… it wasn't Iron Men level tech it was just… oil changes. But then Peter showed her some of the things that Callie was working on, was _trying_ get money and scholarship opportunities for, and it was mind-blowing. Teeny-tiny robots (Peter called them nanobots) that basically could run machines indefinitely and produces no toxic waste, only carbon dioxide and natural gases. It could revolutionize the world. It could usher everyday people into the space age in a truly Star Trek level movement. Space travel wouldn't just be for aliens or supers who could fly and breathe in the cold, dead vacuum of space. It was literally change on a global scale.

So then Samantha began to think that Callie might use those teeny tiny robots for other things. When she herself tried to make a new workout routine, she didn't start from scratch, she built off the platform of things she'd already done that she knew worked. If Callie was trying to create nanobots that were essentially fuel, well, to Samantha, the first plausible step would be to work with types of fuel. Say, fire?

It was all purely speculation to pass the time. But when she passed her theory over to the resident pyro, Eric's eyes lit up like fireworks on the Fourth of July, so apparently it was a good idea.

But theories about where her powers came from or what she might steal next or who the Red Queen was only passed the time. They didn't bring them any closer to actually finding Callie and trying to talk some sense into her. What they needed was a plan. The best idea was still a rehash of the idea at the Museum of Art where the name-dropped a nonexistent item and spoofed the security in order to lure her out. But the problem with that idea was that she was obviously not an idiot and would obviously see it coming from about a million miles away. So they needed a new and improved plan.

But nobody could think of one.

Until one day, Samantha, watching disdainfully a group of teenage girls talk in loud, girlish, giggles, talk about dates for an upcoming dance, had the mother of all ideas.

* * *

"I hate this idea."

"No one asked you."

"Yes, you did! You walked in here and said _and I quote_ 'Peter, what do you think of this idea?' and I'm telling you that I hate it."

Samantha rolled her eyes. "Well, whatever." She turned to Ned. "What do you think?"

Looking like he was afraid Peter would cause him physical harm for his answer, he slowly inched away from his friend. "I think the dance committee will love it. Making the masquerade ball Super themed? That's pretty awesome. But I don't get how our school dressing up as their favorite heroes and villains is going to help us find Callie?"

"Well, obviously first it means that Eric and I can come to the dance." Clearly an important part of the plan. "And then, we use Peter's ability to charm reporters to promote the events. We tell them all the students are dressing as whatever villain or hero they want _except_ only one person is going as Spider-Man."

They both blink at her. "… And why is that?""

"Because we'll drop the info that he's waiting for Inferno to show up."

"… What?"

She rolled her eyes again, fed up with the pair of them. "Don't you get it? We'll make Spider-Man and Inferno like, the freakin Romeo and Juliet of the supe world!" She continues on, ignoring Peter's brilliantly red face. "They'll eat it up, newscasters and reporters and bloggers will think it's the cutest most 'gram worthy shit ever."

Peter closes his eyes, as if he's trying to block out that imagine. "Okay, and that helps us how, again?"

"Duh, Spider-dork, it means Callie will hear everything and we can send her a message that we want her to show up there, that we want to talk to her!"

"… and that message is…"

"I haven't thought that far yet."

"Yeah because that isn't the most important part about the entire plan, right?"

"Well, it isn't," Samantha replied with a frown.

"Then what is?" Honestly, this entire conversation was giving Peter a migraine. Following Samantha around a conversation was like trying to follow a tornado. He couldn't keep up. It was exhausting.

"If Callie is going to be the only Inferno there, who the hell am I supposed to go as?"

Peter's head hit the table with a resounding thunk.

* * *

While the quartet of young adults attempted to plan out how best to trap a criminal teenage who didn't want to be stopped, a new villain was slowly emerging in back alleys and dimly lit side streets of New York City. He was slow to make his way out into the populated areas, knowing that superheroes in this city were a dime a dozen. But he also knew, if he bided his time, and took things slow, things always came out to distract them. The problem with such a densely populated city was the media and with so many 'out' superheroes, their lives were front page.

So when the Fantastic Four left the country to speak at a panel benefiting city reconstruction in Washington, DC, it hit the headlines. When the Avengers left for a mission in space, it was plastered all over Page 1. When Daredevil was shot and presumed dead in a fight in Hell's Kitchen, it was general knowledge.

He just waited until the right time, until the perfect storm of bad luck and plans and missions and life thinned out the superheroes to a more manageable level. Then, and only then, did he step out into the world and show them what he could do. He was sure that they would never see him coming, so he planned to make his debut with a bang that would be remembered. He would paint the media with his name until no one ever forgot it.


	21. Groovy, I Hate It

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (Groovy, I Hate It)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,110  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

Peter hates Samantha's plan like he has never hated anything before in his entire life. He does not want to make this dance themed after the very thing he tries to keep so separate from his family and friends and regular life. He does not want to attend a dance as Spider-Man. Though he doubts anyone will realize that Peter Parker doesn't make an appearance, there is always that possibility. There are already too many people who know the connection, he doesn't not need to add his entire class to the list. He doesn't want to go sweet talk another reporter about a plan that he hates. He doesn't want to have to pretend to be star-crossed lovers, not when the thought of Callie's sad eyes make his arms itch to wrap around her, not when his fingers twitch to push her hair behind her ears.

He does not want to set all of this up and then be disappointed when she doesn't show.

But no matter how hard he brainstorms and tries to think of another plan, even a _worse _plan, he can't. He can't think of anything else that isn't a suicidal mission of trying to track down the Red Queen and demanding she release Inferno from her service. That's not just a bad plan, that's a death warrant.

So he has no other plan, which means he goes along with this idiotic plan of Samantha's and hopes that, at some point, she will come out with a way to lure Callie out.

Of course, he realizes he thought too soon when he sees the Channel 20 News two nights later, with its scrolling headlines across the bottom of the screen. _"Spider-Man Promises to Attend Local Dance with Hopes Inferno Shows to Reciprocate Hidden Feelings_" This was followed by tweets from all over the country. "Spider-Man & Inferno #4ever" "Just kiss already #supelove" "I will go down with this ship!" There were so many emojis.

Holy shit he was going to _kill_ Samantha.

* * *

The days creep by, closer and closer to the dance. More of his days are full of studying for finals, than anything else. There is not much else to do, but wait. He'd long since moved back into his own apartment with Aunt May and, though it sometimes worried him that Samantha was on her own in Callie's townhouse, he made sure to check in on her as often as he could. They still all meet frequently, to plan and hash out ideas. Samantha had decided to attend the masquerade as the Red Queen. Which Peter found typical, but he was intelligent enough to keep that thought to himself. Eric, with his chiseled features had opted for Captain America and Ned, instead choosing to venture outside the real world, went for Alfred, a man behind the mask.

They had heard nothing in reply to the continued social media craze that was Spider-Man and Inferno meeting at a random High School dance. She had neither confirmed nor denied it, there was simply continued radio silence. He was nerve-wracking, to say the least.

But criminal activity was at a mysterious lull. It was the coldest winter New York City had seen in decades and Peter attributed that to the notorious lack of crime. It was, on average, twenty degrees colder than in previous years, snowing so continuously some days that the snow plows never stopped moving. He'd even seen taxi drivers rigging snow plows to the front of their cabs. The streets were empty save for determined employees and frantic holiday shoppers determined to complete their list.

It suited Peter just fine since he was still trying to catch up in all of his classes from back when he'd completely lost focus trying to solve the 'who is Inferno' dilemma.' Half the heroes in the city were using this as an opportunity to complete out of state missions or off planet missions they'd been putting off for the crime-ridden summer months. It was kind of a nice change from the frantic pace of school-crime-study-project-injured-sleep schedule that he'd been on for so many weeks. It was nice to just be normal for a change. Well, there was still Spider-Man stuff to do. But hauling tourists out of snowbanks and nabbing holiday thieves stealing the last new hot toy of the season didn't really take up too much of his time.

So he was free to study and lament his life that he apparent date to the holiday masquerade was a girl who he might actually want to go to the dance with as himself and not as a ploy to lure her out. His life was really very strange and he was wondering what the odds that Inferno really showed up at the dance at all. He wondered if Callie had seen the newspapers or the local news channels or been on Twitter recently. He wonders what she thinks about it all and if she knows it's only partly a ploy. He wonders if she'll show. He wonders what he'll do if she doesn't. He wonders just as strongly what he'll do if she does.

By the time the dance is only a day away, he's actually glad that he's going as Spider-Man and not as Peter Parker. At least he won't have to make too much small talk and he's hoping that no one will be waiting for him to ask them to dance, as conceited as that sounds. But with all the hype about him being there waiting for Inferno, he's assuming not. And though he's sure they'll be a slew of reporters, he knows they won't be allowed on school grounds. The only people he will have to contend with is the student newspaper. And at least he'll have a mask on to hide his disgruntled expression from the world.

It's with a twisting gut that he falls asleep the night before the Super Masquerade Ball, wondering as he drifts off if this will all work out in the end.


	22. Wildcats!

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (Wildcats!)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,620  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

It's every bit as horrible as Peter imagined it would be, really. I mean, every high school student _says_ they want to go to their school dance because they're high off the illusion from _A Cinderella Story_ and shit like that where everything is beautiful and perfect. But in real like schools don't have that much money. That's why they make your own parents chaperone you. And that's why all the decorations were either bought at the thrift store or dug out of people's closets. He see a punch bowl that he distinctly remembers seeing at Ned's house three Thanksgivings ago. It's even shaped like a turkey.

So no, it's not ethereal and magical, not really. The decorations are streamers and balloons from Wally World and the music is being played by a DJ who turns out just to be an ex-student whose daily intake was more 'drugs' and less 'knowledge' and he's playing Pandora and that's his whole plan. The lights have been dimmed to hide the fact that they're in the gym, but there's only so many plants you for wrap around a basketball hoop and, hey, it still just looks like an overgrown basketball hoop. It's tragic.

"I can't believe you're really here, dude!"

That's the tenth time someone has said that. Usually someone who would never give the real life, actual Peter Parker the time of day. This time it's Flash and Peter's never had a conversation with him where the guy wasn't picking on him, so he doesn't know what to say, just flashes him a thumbs up and thanks him.

"Spider-Man is, like, my hero, bro." Flash continues talking, and Peter nods and hm's in random agreement as he continues to scan the room. Samantha has gone all out on her Red Queen costume, no surprise. Eric's costume is clearly a Party City purchase and it should look ridiculous and childish on an adult, but he's so good looking that it doesn't. It's almost enough to make you hate him, really. He and Samantha are posing for pictures and laughing it up. Ned, lurking in the background like an actual weirdo, is watching them. His expression is lovesick and worrisome, but Peter doesn't have the time or energy to deal with it right now. Clearly no one else is keeping watch.

_Guess I'll just do it myself_.

He almost punches Flash when he grabs Peter around the shoulder and holds out his phone in front of them. "Selfie time, bro." Peter rolls his eyes, but thankfully no one can see and holds up a peace sign for the camera. "This is the best dance ever."

"Yeah sure… kid." He doesn't know how to talk to people his own age in his superhero persona. "Look, shouldn't you be… dancing with someone." Flash looks at him incomprehensively. Peter has already discovered that, since the real him is so far down on everyone's radar, no one recognizes his actual voice. So no fake Batman voice needed. "This is a dance, right?"

The look on Flash's face is downright strange. Peter has a terrifying moment where he thinks his hero worship of Spider-Man has been interpreted wrong by everyone all these years and he's going so ask Peter to dance. It's a very surrealistic, out-of-body moment for him and he feels a tangible swell of relief when Flash says, "Oh yeah, good idea," high fives him, and leaves.

"Holy shit." There would have really been no diplomatic way for him to turn down his primary school bully asking his alter-ego to boogie at a shitty high school dance. The Avengers did not prepare him for that.

"Yo, kid, what's up?" Samantha appears from the crown that had gathered around him at the start of the dance and never left, like she was the real Red Queen parting the seething masses. The wig she'd adhered over her own brunette hair looks so real that Peter had thought she'd actually gone and dyed it when they met early this evening. "Any sign of our wayward librarian?"

He crouched down on the edge of the highest bleacher, so he was more eye level with her standing several rows below him. "Not yet. I'm not even sure she'll show, this is clearly a trap."

"But it's not." He'd been scanning the crowd again, but the tone of her voice makes him tilt his head to face her. She's looking out at the dance floor, too, but her eyes are far away and somewhere else, lost in thought. She seems sad. "It's not really a trap if we're trying to help her, is it?"

"I mean… isn't it though?" He doesn't want it to be a trap either. Traps are for villains and criminals. Callie… Callie is just misunderstood. He thinks. He _hopes_. But they're still luring her here under false pretenses, aren't they? He had never told her that he liked her, had never really entertained the notion because he'd been too busy looking for Inferno to see what was in front of his face this entire time. She wouldn't really believe he was here waiting for her, pining for her. Though… in the interest of being honest with himself, he sort of was.

"Well, we're not going to _arrest_ her."

He blinked, though she couldn't see it, and shifted so he could face her fully. "Well, then what are we going to do, Samantha?" She turned to look at him, her jaw line a rigid, defiant, clench of teeth, her eyes dark. "If Callie says no, if she doesn't _want_ to be good – "

"But she – "

He held up a hand to quell her argument. "But if she doesn't. I want her to see there's a better way, too, Samantha. And I really do think she's a good person. But sometimes good people do bad things, and sometimes they don't want to stop." He waited a moment for that to sink in. It was something he'd seen more times than he wanted to, one of the hardest things he'd had to come to terms with as a superhero, but it was still a fact. However much he didn't want it to be. "So what are we going to do if she says no?"

Samantha is silent for a long time, leaning her head forward so her face is partially covered by her red wig. When she speaks, her voice is quiet and broken. "I don't know."

* * *

The next hour is a blur of loud noises and pressing bodies that Peter, in his leotard, loathes and despises. It's hot and sweltering and there's so many people it's hard to keep a lookout for one in particular. The gymnasium is dimly lit and Callie wears all black as Inferno, there are a dozen corners she could lurk in, undiscovered, as she scoped them out. His eyes ache from peering into dark shadows and under the bleachers, looking for a flicker of flame or a flash of cheek or wrist in the blackness. Too many people here are using this as an opportunity to snap photos for their Instagram or try to get autographs or live Snap this 'momentous occasion in superhero romance news.' Samantha is one step away from creating a diversion so idiotic that it borders on insane.

"What if I just pretend I'm the real Read Queen and clear the place out?"

"No, that's – " He pauses, contemplates. Well, maybe… "No, the cops would come, it'd be a shit show."

She sighs. "Yeah, that's true." She eyes the mass of writhing bodies and the teachers and parents who are trying to force the teenagers to stay a ruler's length away. _Leave room for Jesus_, one of the teachers keeps saying in a patronizing tone. He can vaguely hear that there's a set of people underneath the bleachers who are getting really up close and personal with each other. He wonders how naked they'll be when an adult finally discovers them. Peter's also fairly certain Eric lit a trashcan on fire to distract the staff from the fact that Samantha had spiked the punch thirty minutes ago, judging by the retching students out front. Classic, American High School dance.

Gwen is positively green by the time she starts to announce the winners of the costume contest. She's wobbling in her Poison Ivy heels and Samantha's spiked punch is clearly going right to her head as she holds onto the microphone stand for dear life. "Alright, everyone, we tallied your votes and – after disregarding everyone who voted for Spider-Man because he doesn't go here –" Peter snorts to himself. " – the winner of our Superhero Masquerade is… drumroll please…" She fights to open the envelope in her hands.

"Inferno!"

Gwen glances up with an irritated expression. "No one here is dressed as Inferno, you idiot!"

But Peter has seen the same thing that his lab partner from sixth grade had seen: That Inferno had all but materialized out of the shadows behind Gwen and was staring out at the room in silent contemplation.

Waiting for him.


	23. Yeet!

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (Yeet!)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,278  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

It wasn't hard to see that this was a trap. She definitely didn't expect it to be from this angle, but she expected something. But no, not this. She didn't expect to me in the middle of fine tuning her anti-grav boots to make the power supply last longer only to be interrupted by her boss flipping on the TV in the corner with an angry snap and saying, "What the fuck is this?"

Callie glanced up just in time to hear and see the buxom news reporter announce, "_Still no further information on whether or not Inferno will show up to the school dance Spider-Man will be attending in hopes of reconciliation._"

Anita clicked the mute button and turned to stare down at her prodigy with an arched brow and an expectant expression. Callie tried for aloofness, tried to be calm, but it was impossible. She could feel the flush burning her cheeks, her throat. She could feel a bubble of… something… blooming in her chest. She knew she had to answer, but her bafflement was real, so she just gaped at the television, where the reporter was interviewing students about their (she supposed) torrid love affair. "I…"

"Channel 5 has made you in to the Juliet of the fucking super world. You're a villainous Capulet and Spider-Man is fucking Romeo! How did this happen?!"

Her mind scrambles for an explanation that will satisfy her, but what can she say? Anita rants about Spider-Man, but all Callie hears is _Peter_. This wasn't some nameless, masked face setting this trap, it was _Peter_. Peter had done this somehow, set this up, but… but why?

"I don't… know." She doesn't have to fake the confusion, she really doesn't understand. Peter was… geeky Peter always asking questions at the library, always putting his nose where it didn't belong, always knocking things over and being too clumsy for anyone to suspect that he was a graceful hero arching through the skies of New York. But this was also a Peter that, in the past few days she'd started to see differently in her memory. At first it was Spider-Man she thought out, trapping her into revealing her identity and confronting her with it. But then… the days went by, and her mind dwelled on other things. How interested and amazed he had seemed at her research, how you could see the way his mind worked out a problem, the way his muscles looked in his suit as they fought…

"Well, you better find out, because you're going to that stupid dance."

"I… what?" She blinked in astonishment. "But… what if it's a trap?"

Anita laughed regally, her head thrown back like any Queen of Hearts about to behead someone. "Oh, I'm very certain that it is, little spark. But this is your mess. You fix it." And with that she turned on her stiletto and left Callie sitting in silent shock.

"Well, shit."

* * *

Stalking her small group of acquaintances was so easy it was worrisome for her. If she'd been trying to kill the, they'd be dead a hundred times over. Especially Ned, that boy had zero sense of self-preservation or situational awareness. But it also made it easy for her to see that it didn't look like they were setting up any kind of _trap_ at the dance for her. No trap floors or fishing nets rigged to fall from the ceiling. They were just… there. It was driving her insane trying to figure out what their angle was.

Eric and Ned seemed like there were just along for the ride, pulled there by their friends. Samantha seemed angry, and Callie was honestly surer that Samantha would sock her in the jaw the next time they met than Peter would. Peter just seemed… heavy. His shoulders slumped, his eyes were far away, always lost in thought. He seemed sad. Her chest fluttered to think that it was for her.

"Can I help you, Miss?"

She started at the soft question, asked by a pimply face tween holding a clipboard. "Uh, yeah, I'm just here to drop some stuff off." She held up her bag. It held her Inferno suit, but she was praying that he didn't ask to look in it.

"What and for who?"

"I'm not sure. My mom's volunteers for the school board and she just told me to drop it off to the teachers here." She tried to plaster a _mom's, am I right_ look on her face and it seemed to work, because the kid snorted in solidarity and ushered inside, pointing her back towards where the adults were lumped. She waved him off as she started over there, but as soon as he turned his back, she veered off, slipping into a supply closet in the back without anyone noticing her.

She had hours to kill before the dance officially started, but she didn't want to risk them showing up early and catching her sneaking in. So she waited until the lights dimmed and the music became so loud it was vibrating the basketballs in their bins, before she slipped out of her civilian clothing and into her all-black Inferno garb. She snuck out again, grabbing a trap of fluted punch to hold in front of her face, and snuck along the walls, sticking with the shadows, until she was in the darkest corner of the room, at the back of the stage.

It took her only a moment to locate Peter. Since he was the only "real" superhero here, the students were flocked around his perch at the top of the bleachers. She couldn't reach the expression on his face with his mask, but his shoulders seemed tense and rigid. They relaxed when Samantha parted the crowd like water and dispersed them, leaving just the two of them in quiet conversation for long moments. Samantha's back was facing her, and with Peter covered she couldn't read their lips, had no idea what they were planning.

When a surprisingly tipsy young girl teetered onto the stage, Callie watched Peter stand with a fluid grace and face the stage. She shrank farther back into the shadows so he wouldn't see her, but he seemed like he was just listening to what the girl said. She'd never paid attention to _Peter_ as Spider-Man before. She hadn't faced him since she learned the truth. It was amazing how much his carriage changed in the suit. He looked every inch his height, his shoulders looked broader, the tilt of his chin more masculine. He was sure of himself in the suit, confident.

She had stepped forward towards him without conscious thought, not even noticing until someone shouted out. Since she was looking right at him, she was very aware when he looked at her. Though she couldn't see his eyes, she knew they were looking right through hers, looking for a clue as to what she was thinking.

Too late to turn back now.

"Hello, Spider-Man. I hear you've been waiting for me."


	24. Weird Flex, But Okay

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (Weird Flex, But Okay)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,407  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

Peter knows that it isn't him that leaps forward. There's not a single part of him that wants to be in this fight. For all that his voice might have wavered when he said it, he'd meant every word that he'd said to Samantha. He _knew_ that Callie was a good person. She was misguided, yes; confused. She was maybe naïve and yes, how she was dealing with the patriarchy was stupid, but Peter knew that inside there was a different person altogether. The real Callie, who just wanted to create and make the world better with her inventions. With a different mentor she could be the next Tony Stark. Instead of this genius girl who thought the only way to get what she wanted was crime.

So no, it's not Peter that leaps forward with a fist drawn back. It's Callie. But even without his spidey-sense he'd have been able to tell that the punch was going to miss him. He sidesteps neatly, ears half listening as students scramble out of the way and form a loose circle around them. Someone starts chanting "Fight! Fight! Fight!" But they're cut off with an oomph as if they'd been elbowed in the stomach by their nearest classmate. Sure that they're going to stay out of the way (but not sure they'll survive any wayward flame attacks) he watches Callie come to a stop and turn around. Her movements are jerky, as if she's being controlled by strings. She turns to him as if her body weighs a thousand pounds.

"Don't make me do this P – Spider-Man." She tumbles over his name and though his heart skips a beat in his chest, he doesn't think anyone noticed her slip-up. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Then don't." She blinks in surprise, her mouth falling open. He takes it as a good sign, stepping forward slowly. "You're a _good person_. Otherwise you'd already be trying to kill me." That seems to take her aback anew. "I've fought enough criminals to know who's really bad and who's pretending. This isn't the real you."

Suddenly, her demeanor does a complete reversal. Her mouth presses in a thin, hard line, her eyes flash in ire, going almost black in her anger. "Don't tell me who I really am!"

This time when she swings at him, it's for real.

He crouches to dodge, but at the last minute he realizes that will just send her careening into the crowd, so he changes his mind mid-motion. He's off-balance when he reaches up to block her right hook so the force of the motion crumbles his legs and forces him to his knees. Her fist is suddenly grasping at the back of his neck, forcing him down, pushing her weight down. She's too slight for that to be an issue for Peter's strength, but the full power of her nanotechnology enhancing her equipment it feels like he's been hit by a bus. He feels the glossy floor beneath him creak as he pushes back against her.

"Callie…" he says, since they're close enough that no one can hear him over their yelling, "Don't…"

Her eyes narrow. "Stop… telling me… what to… DO!" She forces more and more weigh down with each word until the last is accompanied by her opposite fist suddenly igniting and coming towards his face. Amid the yells and scrambling of students stampeding away from them, Peter slips her grasp and crouches against the floor. Her fist flies harmlessly over his head and, while Callie is trying to regain her balance, he pops up, hands braced against the floor so he could kick out with two feet and send her barreling to the ground. Her fist hits the floor with the sound of a canon. Cracks ripple through the floor like an earthquake.

She yelps at the impact and stumbles forward, arms windmilling to try and keep her feet. He could continue his attack, but he doesn't, just waits for her to turn around, glaring. "Callie," his voice is low, earnest. "Please, I'll beg you if that's what you want." His muscles twitch, waiting for her to make a move. Is this how it was when Tony and Steve fought? Knowing that that was a friend on the other side of the arena from you? Knowing that you didn't want to hurt then, but also knowing they were wrong? "Please… _stop_."

"Why are men always telling me what to do?" He chin tilts up in a move that he's seen on the Red Queen's face more times than he can count. "What gives you the right?"

"I'm not telling you. I'm asking you to do the right thing. Was _this_," he gestures at the students fleeing for their lives, panicked teachers trying to keep order. There's scorch marks on the floor, still smoking and smoldering. "Really what you wanted to do with your technology? Was this how you wanted to make the world better?"

The expression on her face is sick. He knows the answer to both of those questions is 'no.' He knows that she knows it, too. "I _tried_. I tried to do good things and no one would let me. I tried to work hard and go to school and do my research but people just wanted to take it away from me."

"So you decided to take from them?"

"Yes!" Her hands are balls of flames again. What few people had remained to try and watch the outcome of their battle finally lose their nerve and vanish out the doors. Samantha, Ned, and Eric huddle by the exit, tense and wary. Samantha looks ready to leap across the floor at any moment, and only Ned's hand on her arm keep her in place. "I'm not a millionaire, Peter! I can't live without earning money! And they just expected me to hand over my research free of charge and go beg for scraps!" Her voice wavers at the end.

Peter wonders how close she had been to that, to begging for handouts before she resorted to a life of crime. He'd never asked how long she'd tried to do different until she reached her breaking point. He's suddenly ashamed of himself and his chest tightens at the thought of someone as brilliant as this being coerced into this because she was low. "You can still do good, Callie, it's not too late to change. You have m – your friends to help you this time."

The flames wavers, winking in and out of existence. He starts to relax. "You're smart – one of the smartest people I've ever met. You're strong and p-pretty," his voice catches on the word, but he barrels on, hoping she didn't notice, "and so incredibly strong to have just… done whatever you needed to survive. You could take on the world if you wanted. Change it. Make it better." He takes a slow and steady step forward with every sentence, arms spread wide. "I'll help you." He's almost right in front of her. "You're amazing just the way you are… but you could be so much more."

She blinks at him owlishly, looking up at his masked face when he's suddenly right in front of her. "But… I'm a good thief."

Callie sounds so honestly confused at what to do with that information that Peter throws back his head and laughs so hard it brings tears to his eyes. "Weird flex, but okay." Baby steps first? "Well, maybe you could just steal from bad people?"

When she smiles up at him, her mouth quirking just enough to soften her eyes as she stares up at him, he thanks his lucky stars for the mask that hides the sudden heat that suffuses his face. "I can try that… for you."


	25. It Do Be Like That Sometimes

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (It Do Be Like That Sometimes)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 2,270  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

Later, when he thinks back on their fight, he doesn't remember much of it. He remembers moments. The sting of emotion rasping in his throat. The glistening of tears in Callie's eyes. The heat of flames. What he remembers most of all, though, is the unclenching in his chest the moment she said, "I can try." That was all he ever really wanted from her anyway. Because Peter knew, like he knew that Tony was proud of him and like he knew the school science fair was rigged, he knew that if he could only get Callie to _try_, she would see the error of her ways. Bucky was proof of that wasn't he? I mean, Peter was pretty sure he'd killed JFK, but just last week he'd helped Peter with some Russian homework. People changed.

Callie would see how much good was in the world, how much good she _herself_ could put into the world, if only she tried.

He knew that Samantha and Eric, her friends, would trust her change of heart implicitly and he knew that Ned would trust his own judgment about her. But the people of New York would be harder to convince, he knew that. But he'd seen Natasha turn from Soviet spy to a martyr for the galaxy. Bucky turn from World War II war criminal to cherished Avenger. He knew that, eventually, they would grow to care for her the way he had. That her true self, with its quiet strength and mind-blowing intelligence, would wow them and endear her to them. All she had to do was try. And all he had to do was convince her the struggle at the beginning was going to be worth the outcome at the end.

"Peter, I _told_ you this wasn't going to work." Her voice is wavering, thick with emotion, as she rips off her mask and throws it in a crumbled heap to the floor.

He frowns sadly at her, taking off his own mask once he's safely inside his apartment. "I know, Callie – it's just – "

"No, you _don't _know!" She crumbles onto his bed in an exasperated heap, her arms crossed under her chin. "They _hate _me, Peter. And I don't blame them – I'm terrible."

"No! You're just… misunderstood!" He takes a seat at his desk, still facing her, trying to cheer her up.

She snorts. "Calculus is misunderstood, spider-boy. I stole from people, destroyed things, set things on fire. Face it – I'm terrible."

"I mean, the newspaper calls me a menace all the time and I don't give up."

"Peter, who the hell reads the newspaper anymore? Honestly?"

He blinked at her. Okay, she had him there. "Jameson is on the news, too."

She rolled her eyes at him. "Well until he makes a TikTok of you with devil horns and photoshopped to where it looks like you kicked a puppy that goes viral, then I think I have you beat." She sighed and they fell into silence for several long moments. "I just… I don't know what to do."

"What do you want to do? Do you _want_ to be a criminal?"

"No!" She paused, lips pursed. "Setting things on fire is kind of fun though." She breaks into laughter – finally – when he throws a book at her. "But no, I never did. All I want is to go to MIT, get a degree, and come out with a degree that makes people take me seriously, and make the world a better place."

"Do you want to be a hero?"

"I – " She rolls over to stare at him, eyebrows crinkled with thought. Her tawny eyes are wide. "I… don't know. I didn't really think about that either. It just… seemed like a better option than the… well, then the villainy."

Peter feel's his stomach fall at the admission, but he had kind of expected that. He knew it was hard to hear people boo-ing you every time they saw you. He definitely went through phases where people seemed to listen to Jameson more than usually and suddenly he was hated and abhorred by everyone who saw him. Then the Avengers would kick some alien's ass and he'd be back to being a "friendly neighborhood Spider-Man" and teenagers would ask him to dance in their TikToks or give a shout out on their Insta story.

Callie hadn't yet gotten to see that side of New York. She was still Inferno – who stole books or broke car windows or burned gouges in the roads. They didn't care that she helped Peter foil a plot with some up-and-comer named Plot Twist (plot twist: he sucked). They didn't care that she helped Daredevil catch a group of human traffickers down by the docks last week. They didn't care that she was the reason a group of them had finally managed to take down Red Queen when Callie herself set a trap for her. They didn't care that sometimes when she took off her mask, Peter could see the tracks of tears she tried to hide, they didn't care at the way her hands trembled when the booed her. They didn't care.

"Some people – you and Captain America and Daredevil – you all do this because you love your city or your country and it isn't in you to do otherwise. Iron Man – " Peter flinched, " – I think he liked to be the center of attention. He wanted to be a hero because he wanted a new level of fame." A part of Peter wants to stand up for a man that was part mentor, part father, but she's probably right. That didn't make him any less of a hero because he _wanted_ to be a hero. "But I just…" She shrugged. "I just needed money. Does that make me a terrible person?"

"Well… you wanted to do something good with the money so… no?"

She laughed. "Okay, I'm only _sort of _a terrible person, I'll take it. It's better than what people think of me now."

And Peter doesn't really have anything to say to that.

* * *

He does, however, come up with a plan in the middle of the night and it's only his Aunt May screaming at him to go back to bed when he scrambles out into the hall at 3 AM that keeps him from swinging right over to Stark Towers at that moment. He's a ball of restless energy until the first crack of light peeks through his window and then he's gone. He doesn't even bother with the door, just swings in through the upper balcony window. There's a beat of silence as Pepper, Steve, Bucky, and Natasha all turn to him, but then Peter is tackled to the ground by one of Stark Industries' home surveillance bots and all he can do is yelp in surprise.

"Stand down!" The bot slinks off of him at Pepper's voice.

Peter groans and struggles to his feet. Natasha is watching him with a raised brow, Steve is frozen with a spoonful of oatmeal halfway to his mouth, and Bucky is forcibly trying not to laugh. "Fucking ow." Steve looks visibly horrified at the expletive.

"Is there something we can help you with, Peter? I assume it's not a crisis since there are no explosions or screaming." Natasha, always right to the point.

"Uh, actually, I was wondering if Mrs. Potts could help me with something."

"I'm wondering when you'll start calling me Pepper like I asked, but let's hear it," she says, as she takes her seat after shooing the robot away with an exasperated look.

"Well, you know Callie – "

"The pyromaniac thief that you're trying to rehabilitate against our better judgment?"

Peter frowns at Natasha. "Yes, Russian spy, sitting next to the brainwashed Russian agent who assassinated a president, that's the one."

There's a pause. "Alright, you win this round, little spider."

"Thank you." He turns back to Pepper and continues. "- well she honestly doesn't really want to be a hero NOR – " he says loudly, holding up a hand to stave off what he's sure will be a slew of _I told you so's_ from Natasha, "does she want to a criminal or a thief. She wants to go to MIT and she needs money and that was the only way to get it. But I thought if maybe you made a call and they looked at her research proposals they might offer her a place."

"Peter, I can't just _get_ people into MIT. Why didn't they want her in the first place?"

"Well, her grades suck –" There's a wave of eye-rolling. "But only because she was focused on her research, here," he scrambles for the papers he'd brought, "I brought some to show you…"

She's taking them even as she's denying she can do anything. "Peter, I can't just-" Her eyes flicker down and she pauses, then lets the paper take her full attention. Bucky and Natasha, making no effort at all not to be nosy, stand and move to peer over her shoulder. "Well, this is actually fairly impressive." Her eyes flicker up to him. "She showed them this and they wouldn't accept her?"

"She said they were mad about a patent she had on it." Pepper snorted, her eyes still scanning the paperwork. "And they asked if she'd be willing to relinquish it to a male researcher since it seemed very technical for a female."

As he had hoped Pepper (and Natasha) both flare up like torches doused in gasoline. "_What?!_"

Peter and Bucky take a step back, Steve, frantically shoving oatmeal in his mouth, leans as far away as he can. "Yeah, I take it that's not what they're supposed to do?"

"_No!_" She seems overwrought. "Peter, this kind of research can change the world! Can you imagine every single automobile emitting no emissions? This could be applied to planes, trains, boats, military vehicles. It could be applied to _any _piece of machinery. It could almost completely wipe out carbon emissions within the next twenty years. This is… revolutionary, Peter."

"So… you'll call?"

"Hell yes I'll call! Stark Industries is known for the most up and coming high tech research out there. I want her here and if getting her into MIT is how I have to bribe her into my employ then I will!"

* * *

The next morning Peter is tackled again, this time as he leaves school. He groans as his robot-inflicted injuries roar to life at the harsh treatment. "Why God," he mumbles. "What did I do to deserve this?"

"Peter! You will never guess what happened!"

"Callie?" He cracks his eyes open to watch her scrambling off of him, her eyes as bright and her smile as wide as he had ever seen them. He had a pretty good idea what had happened, but he didn't want to spoil her fun. "What happened? What's wrong?"

"Wrong? Nothing's _wrong_, Peter MIT called me. MIT… called _me!_ On the phone. Like they picked up and dialed my number _on purpose_ to extend an invitation to join them in the fall! They said they're received the _personal recommendation of Pepper Potts for my admission_." She gapes at him. "A personal recommendation, Peter! How – how – "

"I showed her some of your research. I hope… I hope that was okay."

"She… she liked my research?"

"Yeah I think she might have used the word 'revolutionary,' but yeah." He shrugged, but he was smiling at her, pleased with her happiness. "She also kind of implied that it was a bribe in order to make sure you take a job exclusively with Stark Industries after you graduate, so… you know… be ready for that."

Her eyes are as wide as saucers. "Are you fucking _kidding me_?" He thinks she pissed at him for a moment, but then she hugs him tightly. He barely raises his arms to reciprocate before she pulls away. His arms feel empty. "That's… that's… awesome! Peter this is the best thing that's ever happened to me! I don't... I don't know how I could every thank you for this…"

Her eyes go all misty and he scrambles for something to say. "No, no, no – I wanted to!" He rubs a sheepish hand behind his head as he grins at her. "It's all part of being a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man."

Her eyes bore into his for a moment more and he fidgets under the gaze. "I wasn't a very good hero, Peter," she says finally, "and I know you really wanted me to be." She continues even when he would have interrupts. "But I promise I'm not going to fuck this up. I'm going to do my best and make the world a better place my own way… _this_ way."

He smiles at her, even though his heart is breaking just a little that they'll never be a team again. "I don't doubt you at all, Callie."


	26. Damn Jackie, I Can't Control the Weather

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (Damn Jackie, I Can't Control the Weather)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 693  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

Time falls into a pattern that is both reassuring and boring. School in the morning, homework, patrol. He sees Callie on the weekends, sees Samantha and Eric for coffee maybe once a week, builds Lego Death Stars with Ned. It's monotonous and dull – patrols are helping tourists with directions, saving cats from trees, helping old ladies cross the street, and once being accosted by a kid who didn't understand long division.

Most of the other heroes in town have vacated for something more exciting and risky. The Avengers are in space. So are the Fantastic Four. (And what exactly did he have to do to be the kind of superhero who just like, _spent time in space_? Unfair.) Hell's Kitchen was so quiet Matt had started taking tons of new cases and doing his _actual_ job. He hadn't seen an X-Men in actual _weeks_. Everything is so… so…

So quiet.

At the risk of sounding like a big giant cliché, it's literally too quiet. It's making his spidey-sense tingle nonstop, making his muscles jittery from disuse, making his nerves frazzled because he knows, he _knows_, that New York City doesn't stay this quiet, for this long. It's strange to think even that it has been quiet for this long.

A calm before an inevitable storm.

A scream tears through the air, almost spilling from the tree he's perched in in surprise. His head swivels around in time to see a group of Central Park picnickers running pell-mell across the lawn, looks of terror on their faces.

"What the – "

He hops down, trying to compel anyone to stop, for just a moment, so he can ask what is happening, where he should go to help, _how_ he can help. Everyone shakes him off, running past him in a panic. And that's when he sees him, walking towards the terrified locals and tourists as calm and collected as someone out for an afternoon stroll. But behind him, destruction.

Behind him is ice. Not winter in New York City snowfall – but White Walker levels of ice, billowing behind him like a cape, turning the grass blue with frost. Trees freeze in seconds, their leaves falling to the ground to shatter like glass. Peter can feel the cold from even where he stands his ground, fists clenched.

"Who are you?!"

The man pauses, head tilted so his long silver-blue hair cascades like a wave across his shoulders. His eyes, like chips of flint, appraise Peter without emotion. "I am death," he whispers, his breath like a winter breeze. At the last word, he stomps a foot and the cold spills from that spot as quickly and violently as an avalanche. Peter leaps backwards in huge ground-eating strides, feeling the cold nipping at his heels like hell hounds. At the edge of the park, the wall of snow and ice whooshes to a stop and Peter stills, turning with a feeling of dread in his stomach to witness the carnage behind him.

Central Park is a frozen wasteland.

Lakes frozen like sheets of glass. Trees and grass blue with frost. Birds and squirrels like statues where they stood. And everywhere, everyone, those people who had been unable to run fast enough, far enough, frozen mid-stride, looks of terror on their faces in permanent agony. An ice-cold Pompeii in the middle of New York.

And in the center, a man stands, at ease in the frigid tundra he had created in the span of a few heartbeats.


	27. You're All Gonna Die! Street Smarts!

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (You're All Gonna Die! Street Smarts!)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,301  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

Peter shakes with adrenaline, with fear, with terror, with guilt, for hours afterwards. He feels sick with the relief that surges through him when he thinks about the people who were frozen like Pygmalion statues, than feels like a terrible person for thinking it. He thinks he should have done more, doesn't know what that more could possibly have been, but feels like he should have at least tried.

Maybe he would have died trying. But it wouldn't have been the first time.

He starts making calls, has a brief moment of grief so profound it makes him sob when he starts to dial Tony's number before remembering –

But no, have to focus. No time for that now, only time to act.

He calls Natasha, Bucky, Quill – all out of service. Calls the Fantastic Four hotline and gets a recording saying they are off planet. Happy answers when he tries to reach Pepper and tells Peter quite rudely that she's dealing with the crisis on her own end, and can't he do something about it by himself? He has no idea how to reach Thor. A rude man answers the phone at Xavier's school, tells him to "get fucked" and hangs up.

He tries to call Callie, but her phone goes straight to voicemail over and over and over. He doesn't even know if she's okay? What if she was one of those people frozen in time in Central Park right now and he can't get to her?

As a last resort he calls a team meeting. The team being himself, Ned, Samantha, and Eric. They meet at the coffee shop in the library where they all first met. They watch him while he explains the situation to them, faces growing paler and paler the more he goes on.

"So basically, I'm on my own and I have no idea how to… how to help or what to do or – "

"You're not alone." Peter lifts his face from the cradle of his hands, when Samantha reaches out to grasp his shoulder. "You've got us."

"Yeah, bro," Ned continues, and Eric echoes the sentiment.

"But what… what are we going _to do_?" His voice cracks. "You don't know what it was like. It wasn't just cold it was… it was like the Ice Age was behind you, like… like nothing I've ever seen before. And I've been to outer space!"

Samantha blinks. "Okay, well we'll come back to that when we're not all about to be Frozen-ed. We'll research! Build something or like, I don't know, come up with a poison dart or something to take him out Punisher-style."

"Yeah, or we could just find some dragon glass and take him out Thrones-style!"

Peter chuckles weakly at that. He tries to plaster a reassuring smile on his face. "Alright then, let's do this!"

* * *

Samantha is a huge asset is tracking down a book on anything they want to learn more about. Need a book on flamethrowers? Got it. Need a book on climate change or weather machines? Check and check. Need an article on building a giant magnifying glass because you're trying to light a bunch of giant ants on fire? Yeah, it's over there by the Winnie-the-Pooh books.

She was pretty useless at coming up with actual ideas, though.

Ned was only slightly better. Except that most of his ideas were, apparently, rehashed ideas from TV shows and books he knew. Dragon glass. Sharks with laser beams attached to their forehead. Some ideas were, quite clearly, better than others.

"I just don't understand why it wouldn't work. Give me one good reason – "

"Because to get enough New Yorkers to work together and simultaneously point their blow dryers at the ice, regardless of the fact that that would be an obscene amount of extension cords, well… you would never get that many New Yorkers working together." Eric shrugged. "You just wouldn't."

Ned gaped at him, then frowned. "Alright, yeah, I guess so."

"A better idea would be, instead of attempting to melt the ice, worry about our new foe. Perhaps create some sort of _normal_," Eric turned a pointed stare towards Ned at the word, "weapon that could withstand entry into that…"

"Snow globe?"

Eric sighed and waved his hand in resignation. "Yeah, snow globe, sure."

There's a long moment of poignant silence where they all try to frantically think of something they could use. Some sort of Stark tech Peter could get his hands on – he even contemplated asking Thor about the eternal flame before he remembered that _that_ was never going to happen. Or maybe there was some modern warfare weapon they could maybe alter or tweak. But, short of an atomic bomb, what could they possibly use?

"Fire seems to be our best bet."

Eric nodded at Samantha. "Yeah, every other type of weapon would definitely destroy… what are we calling this guy?"

"… Jack Frost?"

"Fine… would definitely destroy Jack Frost, but it would also not only destroy all of the people caught in Central Park, but probably take out a wide swathe of the area _around_ there, too. That's just way too much collateral damage for your friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man."

"But we can't just go in there with torches and lighters, that wall of snow is way too powerful."

"… Maybe something along the lines of what Callie uses?" The three boys turn to stare at her. "What? You have to admit that Inferno has the best usage of fire we've seen that could work. I've seen her melt cars, but she has perfect control over it. That's exactly what you're looking for: power with precision."

The gears in Peter's head turn at a thousand miles an hour as he tries to think of a flaw in that plan but… there isn't one. "Callie hasn't answered any of my calls."

Samantha shrugs. "Me either, but I'm sure between the four of us we can whip up something. How hard could it possibly be?"

* * *

It was, as it turns out, incredibly hard.

Two days later, they have made precisely zero progress in a directly that looks worthwhile. The only thing that has changed is that the media is suddenly calling for every superheroes head for not being in New York and doing their job and that the four of them have been forcibly removed from the library for lighting a table on fire.

"Um… Peter?"

"_What_?" He doesn't bother trying to stop the bark in his bite. He's tired, he's angry. He still hasn't heard from Callie, though Samantha said she had, so at least she was alive. Nothing they have tried to build has worked. He's tried every formula he could think of, several that didn't seem like they would work but sounded good in theory, and a few that were literal fan theories he'd found on the Internet. Nothing had worked. Nothing. All he had to show for his efforts was a second degree burn on his forearm and part of a missing eyebrow.

"I don't know how to say this, dude…"

"Then maybe you _shouldn't_, Samantha."

"Yeah… you're gonna die, bro."


	28. Me, An Intellectual:

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (Me, An Intellectual:)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,432  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

His late nights continue for days and days until Aunt My has taken to calling him "Mr. Owl." As in "_Mr. Owl, how many more nights before you get some sleep?_" and Peter isn't old enough to remember the Tootsie Pop commercials so he doesn't really understand it, but she seems to think it's hilarious so he lets her have it. That, and he's too sleep deprived and tired to think of a retort. He's barely functioning at this point, past trying to think of a plan, any plan, that won't kill him.

It's poor going.

He missed Tony with a visceral sort of stomach clenching for more reasons than one. The most pressing reason is that he's absolutely positive that Tony would have already come up with a way to solve this problem. It might have been shoddy and dangerous and might have exploded in his own face, but it would have worked in the end. Mrs. Potts would have hated it. Mr. Rogers would have hated it. Probably Thor would have loved it. As long as Peter didn't wind up as a poof of dust on another planet for five years then Peter would have loved it, too, probably.

Tony would have also made everything seem not quite so desolate and dismal. With his clever quips and jokes, Peter would not have felt like he was fighting against quicksand. Like every breath wasn't pulling in enough air and he was drowning even when standing still and Samantha said she had heard from Callie but she hadn't returned any of Peter's messages so he was still worried she was hurt or injured or trapped and that Samantha was lying to him to spare his feelings and –

A gentle tapping on his window startled him so much his elbow slips off his desk and he follows it to the floor. A soft curl of laughter echoes through the room and even sleep-deprived and sprawled across his carpet, he recognizes the sound.

"Callie?"

When he glances up and squints through his window, she waggles his fingers at him with a cheeky grin. He struggles to his feet and slides the window open do she can finesse her way in without singeing the window ledge with her hover-boots. She stands in his tiny room in the middle of the night, looking at his posters of superheroes and his Lego Death Star and his sonic screwdriver and his Albert Einstein poster. She's smiling softly as she pulls of her mask. "This is literally exactly what I thought your room was going to look like."

For a moment, his mind stutters to a halt. _She thought about what my room would look like?_ He shakes his head to clear it. "What are you doing here?" When her eyebrows shoot up, he realizes how rude that came out. "I mean, I've been trying to get a hold of you _for days_. I thought you might be… " He can't bring himself to say 'dead.' "… caught in Central Park. _Where have you been_?!"

Callie has the grace to look abashed. "I'm sorry." Her voice is soft, hesitant, as she perches on the edge of his bed. "I wanted to answer you… I did… but…" She shrugs. "I was afraid that…"

"That what?" He prompts when she trails off into silence.

"That I would wind up doing _this_ again." She makes a gesture down at her outfit, waving the mask she's holding in her hand. "That's I'd end up right back where I started, right where I didn't want to end up. I told Samantha to let you know I was okay, but… I knew you'd be able to talk me into…"

"Protecting the city?" He can't keep the flabbergasted tone out of his voice, that someone _wouldn't_ want to do that. Especially someone with the types of talents Callie had.

"Fighting." She sighs, body slumping. "I never liked fighting. That's why I stole things at night mostly, less chance of an altercation. That's why I want to make the world _better._"

"But sometimes that means fighting against people who are trying to destroy it."

Her eyes are big and wide as she stares at him, oceans of depth and emotion pooling in them. "That's why I'm here, Peter." He raises an eyebrow at her so she reaches into her pocket and holds up her phone. "Samantha texted me. She told me you were trying to kill yourself, so…" She opens her arm. "Here I am." She gives him a long look up and down, no doubt taking in the dark, raccoon-circles under his eyes, the unkempt hair, the dusting of stubble across his jaw. "You look like shit."

His mouth falls open. "Are you _kidding _me?" He stands up in a whirl of motion, his voice as loud as he dares to make it without worrying about waking up Aunt May. "_Seriously_? Literally there is no one else in this city _besides me_ right now who can fight off Jack Frost and all I needed from you was a little help in getting your tech to work so the _hundreds of people_ who are _frozen_ in Central Park don't die and you couldn't even bother to send me an answer?! You didn't even have to come here, you could have just sent me the schematics – you could have sent them to Samantha or Eric or through the US Postal Service for all I care. I'm not an idiot, I would have understood them!" He sighed, hands falling to his sides as he stared at her in exasperation. "You could have helped me somehow."

She's silent for several long moments. "I know." She sighs. "I know. It's just… it wouldn't have worked."

His brow furrows. "Are you trying to say I couldn't – "

"I'm not trying to say anything, Peter. If it was just a matter of you doing the formulas or building the tech, then yeah, easy-peasy. You would be able to do it no problem. But that's not what the issue is."

"Then _what is_?"

"It's me, Peter." His face is exasperated. "In order to make my tech work so flawlessly, so in tune with me, it had to basically _be_ me – that's why I can use it so finitely and seamlessly. Because the nanobot technology that is in the tech is also in my blood. They're linked together."

He blinked. "What – "

"Think of my tech as a living organism. But it's divided into two parts. One part is the machinery, the part that performs the task. The other part is me, the part that create the thought and puts the motion into action. I could give you the actual boots off of my feet and they still would be barely more than semi-usable hover boots."

He takes a few steps so he can plop down next to her on the bed, the gears in his head turning as he tries to process that information. "So…" he says finally, "what you're saying is…"

"That no part of your plan will work without me."

Peter's eyes are tortured as he turns to her, torn between wanting to let her live her life and the visceral _need_ he has to help people in danger. "Callie – "

She stops him by holding up one hand. "It's okay, Peter. I know what it means, that's why it took me so long to come here. I don't want to fight, but how can I preach wanting to make the world a better place when this is the first opportunity I've have to make a difference to a lot of lives and I'm trying to run away?" She shrugs, flashing him a tentative smile. "I know this means that I've got to literally put my big, girl boots and step up. I'm ready." She nudges his knee with her own and the feeling shoots all the way up to his chest. "I'm with you."


	29. Hey There Demons, It's Me, Ya Boy

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (Hey There Demons, It's Me, Ya Boy)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,048  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

A part of him knows that he should feel bad (terrible, really) for all but dragging Callie back into the nonsense and danger that is his life. But most of him is just thrilled to be working beside her again. While he knows that fighting villains and battling evil with her life on the line aren't how she wants to save the world she is so inherently _good_ at it that it is sometimes easy to forget that.

She seems to thrive under coming up with new ways to improve her tech – to make it more versatile, to make it more delicate. She practically glows under showing him how it works, leaning over him at the microscope, explaining how the nanobots in her blood worked together with each other and with her tech. Her eyes shone with it, he body vibrated with it. He realizes that it's not the saving the world or the city or the people that makes her so excited, it's the science behind _how_ they do it, what's possible with it.

Peter is always focused on the here and now.

Callie sees the future.

"That sounds like a solid plan, don't you think?"

His pencil tip snaps when he startles. "What?" His brain rewinds the last few moments of conversation that had continued while he daydreamed. "Oh, yeah – that sounds brilliant."

She beamed at him and he feels the force of it down to his toes. "Well, then – let's do this!"

* * *

For all his bluster and bravado getting Callie to help him, it takes him another two days to work up the courage to make the final move. It's two days where he thinks about all the things he still wants to do with his life, with his own future. He cleans his room, helps Aunt May with the chores, has lunch with her, avoids answering her questions when she asks him why he's acting so weird. He finishes the Lego Hogwarts castle with Ned, tells him he can keep it, leaving unsaid that he knows he might not come back from this. Ned hugs him and neither one of them admit to crying. He calls Mrs. Potts, gets her machine, leaves a message that she'll probably get sometime tomorrow and be frantic with worry over. He's not known Samantha or Eric that long, but what they've gone through has made them close, so he makes time for them, too.

The night before he and Callie make time for only each other. He doesn't ask her if she's called her family, she doesn't ask him how he's spent his potentially last couple nights on Earth. They don't talk of much anything. They just sit, side by side, the picture of a perfect teenage date. Only they were 50 stories up the side of a skyscraper with their legs dangling over the side like they were sitting on a park bench.

They sit in silence, watching the sun go down over the city, taking it all in, each thinking their own thoughts. When the last few rays are falling beyond the horizon, he inches his hand over just far enough to intertwine their pinky fingers together.

Callie doesn't move for a moment, just long enough for Peter to regret it, but then she turns her hand and grasps him by the hand, never taking her eyes from the purple and red sky. She blushes to the roots of her hair, but Peter doesn't mind, because he's blushing, too.

* * *

The next morning dawns clear and hot, a New York summer morning. But Peter and Callie, making their way to Central Park, notice that the air grows colder, colder, colder the closer they get to the ice storm in the middle of the island.

It's strange to them both, to everyone really, that Jack Frost has made no demands, made no statements, about why he's here or what he wants. But, at this point, Peter doesn't really care. He doesn't follow the headlines or the news stories or the Facebook live videos or the Reddit conspiracy theory threads. He doesn't care if that man is here for revenge or a purpose or to make a statement or to cause a scene. All he cares about are all the poor people, animals too, that are trapped in that ninth circle of hell. Frozen. Solid. Waiting. Dying.

He _has_ to save them.

No matter what.

The wall of ice appears before them suddenly and they drop down to the sidewalk to contemplate it. There are no people around, even in the middle of summer in the middle of day. Everyone gave this area a wide berth, fearing the rumors that, at any moment, a frosty arm would reach out and grab you, pulling you in, and you'd never been seen again.

Rumors, of course, because, since the moment this had happened, no one been able to get in. Until now.

He looked over at Callie. "Ready?"

She tried to flash him a cocky smirk and half-succeeded. "Always." With that she snapped her wrist, her whip of flames bursting into stark relief. Instead of flicking it forward, she wraps it around her hand as tightly as a fist and reaches out, with only a moment's hesitation, to lay a hand on the swirling wall of sleet and snow. For a long moment, so still Peter could hear his own heartbeat thundering in his ears, nothing happens.

Then, with a screech of wind that sounds like breaking glass, a door opens in the snow-wall.

With a wary glance at each other, the two step through the opening, side-by-side.


	30. Bye, Felicia!

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (Bye, Felicia!)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,623  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

"Shit!"

Peter gasps as another blast of ice-blue power hurtles towards him. He barely manages to avoid getting annihilated by the energy surge by springing backwards. He lands on a frozen lake, feet slipping for a moment before he regains his footing. His eyes dart around, looking for Callie, making sure she wasn't caught in the attack, but she's hovering a few yards away, tired and panting and disheveled, but otherwise unharmed.

The entire battle had been a game of cat and mouse. They had tried to talk to him, to understand his motives so they could potentially reason with him. But he was as silent as a tree, never uttering a word, never altering his expression from the blank mask he still wore now. When it seemed inevitable that it would have to be a fight, they'd tried to lure him away from the bulk of the frozen bodies.

But they weren't fast enough to avoid the heart-wrenching sound of statues shattering as they darted to and fro, bringing the fight to an empty corner of the park. Every glass-like breaking tore at Peter's heart. Another person dead. Another person he failed. Another. Another. Another.

"Peter!"

He barely dodges another blast thanks to Callie's frantic shout. He's out of his element here. The trees aren't very tall. There's no skyscrapers, no cranes, nothing for him to swing from. His webs freeze into ice the moment he tries to use them. Worthless. All he has are his quick reflexes and they aren't helping anything. If he could get close enough, maybe he could land a good enough punch to knock him out, but anytime he attempted to get closer he was assaulted with a barrage of attacks, forcing him to jump away. He wished insanely for his Iron Spider suit but he hadn't seen that in over a year, not needing something so high tech, and not having the guts to ask Mrs. Potts for it. It reminded him too much of Tony. But he wished now that'd he'd been smart enough to ask, smart enough to think about the fact that he was useless here on a frozen lake and flat field.

Callie, though, was a wonder.

She hovered just out of range of his attacks, retaliating with her own every time there was an opening. Her whip was an extension of her very skin and she wielded it spectacularly, adjusting the heat to be the perfect temperature to melt, to maim, to hinder. All Peter could do was jump in and keep him distracted and focused on his quick, bird-like movements, giving Callie the time the edge in closer, to injury and incapacitate.

But the fight had been dragging on for over an hour. Peter's muscles were screaming at him. The only reason he wasn't out of web fluid was because it wasn't even worth it to use, except maybe to tie him up should they ever win this battle. But Callie, who's attacks were centered in her very blood, was faltering.

She wavered and bobbed in the air, her boots flickering and times and going out. Her whip crackled with the same efficiency it always did, but her eyes were unfocused, her breaths panting and harsh, her face pale and bloodless in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. He can tell she's got only a few more minutes of this before she runs out of fuel.

"Callie!" He calls out to her and she flies closer, her flight path as erratic as a bumblebee. She keeps a wary eye on Jack Frost as he attempts to stagger to his feet after her last attack. "We have to end this now." Half of the man's face is melted off, parts of him sizzle and pop with heat. He lurches to his feet ungracefully, the first expression they've seen on his face as he glares at them. "We won't last much longer."

"Yeah, well do you have any brilliant ideas? I'm kind of doing the best I can here, if you hadn't noticed."

"I mean…" He actually did _not_ have a plan. Well, not a good one anyway. "I was thinking that – " They both dodged in opposite directions as Jack Frost struck at them. Callie snapped out with her whip, landing a stinging blow on his arm that smoked and hissed as angry red welts appeared. "I was kind of thinking that I could draw him into a close-quartered fight and give you time to power up and just like… blast him?"

She's silent for a long moment. "He might kill you, Peter."

He shrugged. "Worth it, if it works."

Another long silence, as they watch Jack Frost steam and try and orient himself enough to attack them again. She opens her mouth as if to say something, but closes it without uttering a word. She flattens her lips into a thin, contemplative line, looking as deep in thought as someone in the middle of a life or death battle can look. Finally, she sighs. "Alright."

"_Great_." His sarcasm is obvious, since he really doesn't want to potentially die. But Callie is their best chance. If he can give her enough time to power up, so she can blast Jack Frost in a big enough attack to destroy him once and for all. "Well, here goes nothing." And, without giving him a chance to chicken out or second guess himself, he leapt forward.

His first blow lands squarely on Jack Frost's cheek and Peter feels the crunch of bone under his knuckles with a sound like crumbling glass. He swings again with his left fist, but it's blocked by a rock hard forearm. Peter feels the vibration all the way down to his teeth. It shakes him enough that the elbow to his face rattles the inside of his skull like a maraca and he goes momentarily blurry-eyed with the pain. But he manages to grasp at Jack Frost's jacket with his right hand and his own momentum from being punched carries them both along to tumble and skip across the ground like a stone across the surface of a lake.

Peter feels each impact bruising his skin, cracking his ribs, but when he rolls to a stop, he still forces himself to his feet, swallowing the groan that tries to inch its way up from the depths of his soul. He can't give up, he _can't_. He has to give Callie enough time to power up enough for an end-all level blast, so they can save everyone in this park, everyone in this city.

He forces himself forward, forces himself to continue to trade blows. Punch. Kick. Dodge. Duck. Kick. Kick. Jump. Punch. Dodge. An endless dance, repeated over and over. And just when he thought he was only a moment away from dropping in exhaustion –

"Peter. Move."

Callie's voice is hardly recognizable, it crackles and murmurs like a fire pit. When he turns, he gasps. She's alight with fire, glowing with it like a Phoenix. Fire fills her eyes, her mouth; her hair is a mess of flames. When she tells him to move again fire spills from her lips. When he moves behind her he catches a trace of her smell, like metal and embers and gears and burning, burning, burning. She gives off heat like a furnace, growing hotter by the second as he stands there. She vibrates like a heater and he's suddenly, incredibly, extremely worried about her.

"Callie…"

She holds up a hand. It fills with light. No… not light… white-hot fire. As it flares, drops of blood start to drip from the corners of her eyes, from her nose. The fire is almost supernova in her hands. It brightens and flashes and grows in her hands. Jack Frost looks, if possible, even paler. He's backing away slowly, but Callie is floating closer and there is no escape from the wide sweeping motion her arm makes.

Fire burns everyone she motions, leaving nothing behind but dust and smoke. Peter can't even see far enough to see if the battle is officially over.

She hovers there for another long moment, the fire fading from her skin, her eyes fades back to brown, her skin growing pale again. But then her eyes start to flutter and, as Peter watches, she starts to tumble from the sky.

He barely manages to catch her before she hits the ground and he feels his stomach drop at what he sees when he looks at her.

She is bleeding from her eyes, her ears, her nose, her mouth. The blood is as hot as a flame and it is sparking with pops of electricity. When she coughs, flecks of blood and a poof of smoke are emitted. It sounds wet and heavy, like her lungs are full of fluid. He breaths sound like she's been inhaling smoke and smell like soot and ash.

"Did we… win?"

He doesn't even have time to open his mouth to answer before he eyes roll back in her head and she goes limp in his arms.


	31. Thank U, Next

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (Thank U, Next)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 1,157  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

When she wakes, it takes her several long moments to blink the crust from the seams of her eyes. Her mouth feels as dry as parchment and her entire body aches like she's been steam-rolled. She looks terrible. When she tries to speak, the tube in her throat prevents her from saying anything, and she panics. An alarms starts blaring as her heart rate soars. Several people she does not recognize rush into the room and she is surrounded by soothing hands and cold equipment until, finally, blissfully, she swallows and speaks.

"What… happened…"

A nearby doctor opens her mouth but the voice that answers comes from the doorway. "I think I can answer that."

Several eyes swivel over to the door, where Samantha is leaning against the frame. Her posture and voice are lowkey and relaxed, but her eyes are glistening with relief at the sight of Callie, awake and coherent. She nods her goodbyes and makes several murmuring comments to the medical staff as they leave the room. Only when they are all gone does she step into the room and close the door behind her.

Only then does she take the three steps to the side of the hospital bed and lean down to hug Callie as gently as she can, burying her face in her friend's neck. "Thank God you're okay."

"What happened?" Her voice is a little stronger this time, sounding more like herself and Samantha sighs, pulling back and settling onto the edge of the bed.

"Well, you won, that's what you really want to know, right?"

"Peter – "

She waves her off. "Oh, he's fine, too. Melting Jack Frost didn't unfreeze everyone, unfortunately, so he's been working with Pepper Potter trying to figure out a way to both preserve and… well… defrost everything." She rearranges herself. "But yeah, anyway, from what Peter explained to me, your last attack really ended everything – and I mean _everything_, all your nanobots overheated and started to explode inside you. But luckily… like weirdly, creepily, _incredibly_ luckily, Peter knows, and I shit you not, an honest to God princess who is the smarted person I have ever heard of, who happened to have _just_ arrived in New York City and she literally froze you like Walt Disney's head and, a few days later when she'd stabilized your bots, she thawed you out like a slab of meat for dinner."

Callie blinked. "I… okay, I think I understand… and, that's gross, first of all, but cool, I guess."

Samantha shrugged. "I know, right?"

"So… what else has happened?"

Samantha talks for as long as Callie can stay awake, which is, regrettably, not long. But she promises to return soon. It's a promise she keeps like clockwork while the medical professionals make sure she is whole and hale. She visits almost every day. On days she cannot come, Eric comes. Ned comes to see her. Ever Mrs. Potts comes to see her, to assure her that her spot at MIT has been put on hold for her until she is fully recovered, no questions.

Who does _not_ come to see her… is Peter.

* * *

Two weeks pass and he knows that Callie has been discharged and he knows that he should have visited or called or texted or _something_, anything was better than nothing. But it would have been too hard to say goodbye to her again after everything they had gone through. Especially now.

But she deserved something, at least.

He taps on her window softly, but she still looks up at the sound. When she sees it's him, her face lights up, then shutters closed. Her expression is wary as she opens the window for him to crawl through. "Peter? What are you doing here?"

"I came to see you."

She crosses her arms. "I wasn't aware that was something you wanted to do since I haven't seen a single hair of you since I almost died."

He winced. "Yeah, about that…"

"Got what you wanted from me, huh?"

His eyes widen and he pulls the mask from his face. "What?! No! It's just that it was…"

"It was what?"

"Too hard."

She scoffed. "To come see me? Of puh-_lease_ –"

"To have to say goodbye."

"I wasn't _dead_ – "

"No, to _this_," he gestures at the uniform he wears, "doing this with you. You offered to help me with Jack Frost, but no more, nothing after and I… I would miss that. And I knew if I came to see you I would ask you to stay – I mean, to keep doing this with me and I didn't want to pressure you, to make you think that…" He runs a hand through his

hair. "I don't know… I didn't want to pressure you, I wanted to… to give you space. That way… in case you decided you _wanted_ to keep doing this… with me… it would have been your decision alone."

Her eyes are wide as she listens to his rambling speech. "I – "

"But just so you know," he says, unfurling a curled newspaper he'd been holding under his arm that she hadn't even noticed before. He lets it fall loudly onto her desk and the headline emblazoned across the cover leaps out at her. _Inferno Sets Our Hearts Aflame – Helps Save the City_. He drops another one on top of that one. _We're Burning For More Inferno!_ And another one. _Spider-Man and Inferno – A Superhero Duo Made In Heaven_. And another. _Winter Is Gone Thanks To Inferno!_ "They all love you."

She gaping down at the headline, all accompanied with photographs and lengthy articles. So long goes by without her uttering a word that Peter sighs and turns to leave. A gentle tug on his sleeve stops him and he turns, half in, half out of the window.

Callie is avoiding his gaze when she speaks. "I might want to say a little longer…"

When she looks up at him from under her lashes, he doesn't stop to think, doesn't give himself time to chicken out or wait for a better moment. He just leans down and kisses her. He can taste the smile on her mouth as she kisses him back. And _that_ is worth every hardship they faced to get to this moment.


	32. Epilogue That's The Tea, Sis

**Title:** Love & Misadventure (That's The Tea, Sis)  
**Genre:** Romance / Adventure  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peter Parker x OC  
**Spoilers:** MCU through _Avengers Endgame_ and all of _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ minus the end credits scene  
**Summary:** Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.  
**Word Count:** 490  
**Warnings:** NaNo competitor

**Disclaimer:** _Marvel_ and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.

**A/N:** The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

* * *

_**INFERNO AND SPIDERMAN CONTINUE TO WORK TOGETHER TO SAVE CITY  
**__By Tanya Tucker_

_If you haven't been by Central Park lately – it's worth the trip. You'll more than likely catch a glimpse of New York City's hottest couple since Tony Stark and Pepper Potts tied the knot. Spider-Man and Inferno, who came together a few short weeks ago to rid the city of the villain Jack Frost, are still working diligently to unfreeze all of those poor, unfortunate individuals who are still frozen. _

_You might see them working alongside several of Stark Industries employees or even several MIT students who have been recruited to the job. Their commitment to the cause is outstanding, as they attempt (and succeed!) in thawing out people, animals, and plants that have been affected by this disaster._

_But they always make time for a fan – whether for a selfie, Insta-story, or TikTok video. And if you're really lucky, you __**cont'd on page 8.**_

_**NEW STARK INDUSTIES TECH CHANGES WORLD  
**__By Steven Soles_

_We got a sneak peek this work on something CEO Pepper Potters assures us is coming no later than this time next year – nanobots!_

_The tech is very hush-hush still, but at a recent press conference, Potts guaranteed the public that what they were working on with an unnamed MIT student would complete revolutionize the future of the planet and would change the global carbon footprint in less than a decade __**cont'd on page 12.**_

Peter grinned as he read the headlines emblazoned across the newspapers in the stand.

"What are you smiling at, kid?"

He spins at the voice, rotating on his web so he can see eye-to-eye with Callie. It's only strange because he's upside down and she's hovering a story above the street. He grinned at her. "Only the prettiest girl in the city."

"Just the city? I must be losing my touch." But she's smiling and moving closer.

He pulls his mask down as he answer. "Well this city is my whole world." They're drawing closer together. "So you must be the prettiest girl in the world then." Then there's nothing else to say because their mouths are occupied with each other.

Heedless of the cheers from pedestrians from down below, they smile against each other, content and happy and blissful.


End file.
